From a small agency point of view, we regularly go up against the big agencies and on a few occasions, we've just missed out because we dont have a big creative team etc, nor do we have the resources to heavily invest in pitches. Hence, client Y going with a bigger agency.

For our last pitch, however (to an education client in the North West), we took the bold approach of investing a lot of time and money into getting the creative message right. We ended up winning the business last week and from the feedback from client Y, it was not only because they were they really excited about the online stuff, but we took it to the next level and delivered a variety of creative concepts. This allowed us to not only to demonstrate what they should be doing from a digital persepctive, but exactly what it would look like!

Now I'm pretty sure they don't think we sit in flashy offices (anyone that's been here will vouch for that), but hats off to this client for treating every pitch on merit and not on e.g. the size of the agency and it's client base. If we didn't win client Y, we would have been dissapointed of course, but it just goes to show that a little investment is well worth if it the reward is great enough.