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September 16, 2026
Nerdo ECD Claus Cibils makes a compelling case for building an environment of mutual respect and gratitude within the universe of creative pitching in this latest chapter of his series of Stash editorials.
We’ve all lost count of how many times we’ve said yes to a pitch with four days to deliver, half a brief, no money, and answers that arrive too late to help. And somehow, we make it happen anyway. On time.
Every time, it feels like we have pulled off a Houdini act. The thing is, magic does not exist. Tricks do. Just smoke, mirrors, and a team making impossible conditions look routine. That is the real illusion.
The trick is not only that the work appears; it is everything that disappears to make room for it. And the problem is that we have pulled it off so many times that everyone now expects it. From the outside, the trick worked. What nobody sees is what it took.
“A team under constant emergency pressure does not think the same way as a team under structured pressure. One is solving. The other, surviving.”
The cost of that effort, blisters included, does not disappear; it just moves into nights, weekends, existing projects, families, mental health, rushed thinking, and the quality of the work. That is the part the industry still struggles to say out loud. The stress often arrives before the project starts: before it is awarded, before production, before the contract, before the work is officially work.
People are already tired when they are supposed to be at their peak. That should concern everyone. Fatigue doesn’t just hurt the people doing the pitch; it changes the work itself: how far teams explore, how much risk they take, and how quickly they start protecting themselves.
A team under constant emergency pressure does not think the same way as a team under structured pressure. One is solving. The other, surviving. And survival has a creative signature. It produces safer routes, familiar references, and defensive options. Work begins to look complete because completion is easier to judge than depth.
The absurd thing is that this is often the first step of projects with real investment behind them: campaigns, films, launches, brand moments, and business decisions with serious money and serious pressure attached somewhere in the system. And yet, the time, clarity, and budget logic often disappear before reaching the people asked to shape the first version of the work.
The faster the response required, the more invisible the cost becomes. In pitching, immediate response is frequently treated as the price of admission. The team is not just doing work. The team is funding the chance to maybe win the right to do more work. And after four days of racing, guessing, building, rewriting, designing, estimating, and absorbing risk, the deck often starts with:
Thank you for the opportunity.
That sentence is not wrong. Manners matter. Relationships matter. Opportunity matters. But the sentence carries weight because the system has trained people to express gratitude while absorbing the cost. Of course, no one writes it that way. No one means it that way. But sometimes the structure says it anyway.
– Thank you for the unclear brief.
– Thank you for the unpaid sprint.
– Thank you for the weekend.
– Thank you for maybe considering us.
“If the process keeps teaching everyone to run before they understand the race, the strongest talent will stop seeing pitching as an opportunity. They will see it as a warning sign.”
In a healthier system, gratitude would move in both directions. The people invited into a pitch can appreciate the opportunity. The people requesting the pitch should recognize the commitment being made before the project even exists.
Time was given. Attention was given. Thinking was given. Craft was given. Existing work was interrupted. Teams were stretched. People cared. That deserves more than silence. By the time the next pitch arrives, the system no longer has to ask anyone to panic. People arrive pre-panicked. They can still deliver. They can impress. They can even win.
If the process keeps teaching everyone to run before they understand the race, the strongest talent will stop seeing pitching as an opportunity. They will see it as a warning sign.
WE LOVE PITCHING
Let’s change the way we play the game.
Follow Claus on LinkedIn and Instagram.
WE LOVE PITCHING: Let’s change the way we play the game.
DISCLAIMER: All images are AI-generated. If it feels real, uncomfortable, or a little ridiculous, it’s intentional. Artificially made. Human crafted.
