Why brands are turning advertising pitches into free strategy

New Delhi: Every December and January, the Indian advertising industry slips into a familiar mode. Pitch calls rise sharply. LinkedIn fills up with posts asking agencies to “share credentials”, “present fresh thinking” or “come back with a bold new roadmap”. Agencies rush to respond. Senior leaders step in. Strategy teams work through nights and weekends. Decks pile up.

On the surface, it looks like healthy competition and active business development. But beneath this sits a practice that agencies increasingly describe as something else: the hoax pitch.

A hoax pitch is not a badly managed pitch. It is not a pitch that falls through because budgets change or leadership moves on. It is a pitch that is called without any real intention of appointing an agency, created mainly to extract ideas, frameworks, media thinking or long-term strategy that can be absorbed into the brand’s annual plans.

The difference lies in intent. And intent, in advertising, is hard to prove. Yet across agencies, big and small, creative and media, the same story keeps surfacing. Pitches are called during the annual planning season. Agencies are asked for full-year thinking. Then the process quietly stops. The agency gets nothing. The thinking stays with the brand.

LinkedIn has become the most visible stage for this ritual. Junior marketers post open calls. Hundreds of agencies respond. The volume itself becomes proof of interest, and cover for a process that often has no real end point.

LinkedIn and the illusion of openness

Industry leaders said LinkedIn has changed how pitches are called and how casually they are treated.

“You see signs of this today on LinkedIn,” Krishna Iyer, Business Head - Lintas Live and Director of Marketing at MullenLowe Lintas Group, remarked. “A junior marketer posts an open call for a pitch, and suddenly there are hundreds of responses. That kind of feeding frenzy itself tells you how loosely thought-through the process is. Serious pitches are rarely crowdsourced in public forums,” he told BestMediaInfo.com.

The platform has made it easy to start a pitch, but also easy to avoid responsibility. There is no formal shortlist, no senior sign-off, and no obligation to close the loop. Visibility replaces intent, and activity replaces outcome.

Virat Tandon, co-founder, Curativity, saw the same shift. “LinkedIn has made this incredibly easy,” he said. “Earlier, calling a pitch required effort, shortlisting agencies, reaching out, and briefing them. Now you just post an update, and agencies flood your inbox.”

This openness, agencies argued, creates the perfect environment for hoax pitches. When everyone is invited, no one can question the seriousness. When hundreds respond, no single agency can afford to step back.

“There are enough agencies in the market. Some pitch posts get 100-150 agency responses. As long as that keeps happening, the practice will continue,” Tandon observed.

The year-end pitch cycle

The hoax pitch is most evident in December and January for a reason. This is when annual plans are being locked, budgets are uncertain, and leadership expects fresh ideas.

“Hoax pitches are rarely isolated incidents. They are systemic and most visible during December and January for a reason,” Iyer observed.

“Year-end and fiscal closures create perfect cover. Marketing teams are not prepared and are under pressure to show ‘activity.’ Leadership wants fresh ideas for the new year, and budgets may still be unapproved. Calling a pitch has become a low-risk way to signal momentum without committing to spend,” Iyer added.

When no mandate follows, excuses are easy to find. “When no appointment follows, it’s blamed on budget freezes, restructuring, new CMO appointment or shifting priorities. In reality, many of these pitches were never meant to culminate in a mandate,” he noted.

Naresh Gupta, Founder, Bang In The Middle, said the scale of pitching has become impossible to ignore.

“Today, there is a pitch every single day. Almost every brand seems to be on a pitch. How many of these pitches actually convert into business? Nobody knows. Nobody tracks it. The process is completely unregulated. The number of pitches happening today is insanely higher than it has ever been,” said Gupta.

LinkedIn reflected this clearly. “Just look at LinkedIn. At any point, you’ll find 15-20 brands openly looking for agencies,” Gupta added.

Where inefficiency ends, and exploitation begins

Agencies accepted that pitching has always carried risk. But hoax pitches cross a different line.

“There’s a clear moment when inefficiency tips into something more uncomfortable. If a brand calls a pitch knowing fully well that no appointment will follow, it’s no longer about keeping options open; it is about ‘extraction’. Sadly, time, thinking, and intellectual capital are being taken without intent to pay for them,” said Iyer. 

This extraction rarely looks dramatic. It is quiet and incremental. A framework here. A category insight there. A media approach that later appears in an internal deck.

“When a pitch ends without a mandate, the primary beneficiaries are often internal marketing teams,” Iyer said. “Marketers walk away with multiple strategic perspectives, campaign ideas, and media frameworks that can be repackaged into annual plans.”

Chiming in, Tandon stated, “It becomes unethical when a client doesn’t award you the business but uses your ideas,” recalling a case where his former agency publicly called out a brand.

No guardrails, no referee

What allows hoax pitches to spread, many leaders said, is the lack of any real rules. Iyer pointed out that, unlike law or consulting, advertising has yet to adequately protect the value of its thinking. Until that changes, he said, agency exploitation will continue to be passed off as “competitive evaluation” or weakly justified under the guise of procurement processes.

Gupta was blunt. “The industry has never protected its intellectual property. If we haven’t bothered to protect what we create, then this conversation will keep repeating itself,” he said.

He observed that there was once a basic ethical understanding between clients and agencies, where neither side deliberately harmed the other, but that equilibrium no longer exists. Today, he said, there is little clarity around intellectual property, ownership, or ethical use, creating what he described as an exploitative environment.

Legal options offered little relief. “Going to court in India is time-consuming and costly. Very few cases ever reach completion,” Gupta stated. “Some of the biggest names in the industry have been dragged to court over this. Some cases were settled out of court; some weren’t.”

Smaller agencies suffered the most. “For smaller agencies, every pitch is a massive financial and operational burden. No pitch is free,” Gupta noted.

Not all pitches, but enough to matter

Some voices urged balance. 

“I wouldn’t say there is a lack of genuine intent. Pitches have been a part of my professional life for as long as I can remember,” said Ranjoy Dey, marketing consultant and a former media agency head.

He noted that year-end planning often involved incumbent agencies working closely with marketing teams. “The incumbent agency is as much a custodian of the brand as the marketing team itself, so this planning is often a collaborative process.”

Vandana Das, strategy consultant, Wondrlab India, agreed. “While you may be noticing a trend, it’s important to say that not all pitches are disguised in this manner. Even today, clients do move on from existing agencies after a pitch. That does happen,” she said.

Still, both agreed the system lacked accountability. “I believe organisations should impose mandates on themselves, just as they impose requirements on agencies,” Dey said. “If agencies are given clear do’s and don’ts for pitch presentations, organisations should also commit to providing feedback, communicating decisions, and concluding the process within a defined timeline.”

Where solutions begin to emerge

Despite the frustration, leaders pointed to clear ways forward if the industry chooses to act.

There are early warning signs agencies can learn to spot. Vague briefs. No budgets. No clear decision-maker. A heavy focus on full-year roadmaps at the pitch stage. Reluctance to talk about scope or timelines.

“There are clear warning signs agencies can learn to spot early,” Iyer said. “When everything is framed as ‘exploratory,’ it usually is.”

Agencies need to become more cautious about what they share. “Agencies should absolutely reconsider presenting full-year strategies and granular media plans upfront,” he noted. “Early stages should test chemistry, thinking approach, and problem framing, not hand over execution-ready playbooks.”

Pitch fees emerged as a practical filter. Tandon described them as a ‘seriousness test.’ Das framed them as honesty.

“If clients want thinking for annual planning, they should say so upfront and pay for it,” Das said.

Ultimately, the issue came down to courage.

Iyer said the real question is whether agencies have the courage to demand a pitch fee and walk away if it is refused. He added that business pressures and the fear of being blacklisted often prevent agencies from exercising the collective power they actually hold.

Until that changes, hoax pitches are likely to remain exactly what they have become: an accepted, unpaid layer of India’s annual marketing ritual. Efficient for brands, expensive for agencies, and quietly damaging to trust across the industry.