We conducted our first PFH (Pitch From Home) today.

It was beautiful.

Our team assembled from their respective home offices/spare rooms/kitchens, spread across London (and Wiltshire in my case). Five enthusiastic little heads in Zoom boxes, ready to deliver thinking we’d spent the last week adapting and retooling with every shift in our wobbly new world.

The clients arrived, equally exposed in the seat of their real lives. No boardroom, no power dressing, no bullshit. We even had a little kid wander in and out, professor Robert Kelly style.

What followed was one of the most open, honest and ego-free pitches I’ve ever been involved with. We shared our research and insights, we acknowledged that they could change again within days. We talked through the creative routes, not shying away from the increased significance of brand language, semiotics and purpose.

None of us was carried away with the feeling that our campaign was the most important thing on the planet right now, but equally, we addressed the real needs of the client’s business, and the ways we could continue effective marketing with value and without opportunism. I think we got to a great place in just one hour of open, bullshit free conversation.

However things play out with this particular pitch, there’s no doubt in my mind that marketing is going to change, in ways that have to be good for our industry and our impact on culture.

When we all get together in more raw states, naked of the usual layers of ego-defence and brand hubris, speaking as people, not marketing-people, we think more clearly, we’re more honest and balanced, and we TALK. LESS. SHIT.