Asia's Agencies Are Pitching More Than Ever. Here's Why That's a Good Thing.

Asia's Agencies Are Pitching More Than Ever. Here's Why That's a Good Thing.

The advertising industry loves to complain about pitches. Too long. Too expensive. Too draining. Talk to anyone who has survived a major agency review and they'll have war stories.

But here's what the critics miss: pitching isn't broken. How pitches are run is often broken. That's a very different problem.

As markets across Asia grow faster and more complex, the pitch process isn't becoming less important. If anything, the stakes are getting higher.

The Numbers Tell a Different Story

China's pitch market grew 10% in 2025, reaching 141 pitches, even as overall marketing budgets contracted sharply. That's a remarkable signal. Brands aren't cutting pitches when money is tight. They're running more of them with tighter mandates.

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The reason is simple. When you're spending less, you need to be more confident you've chosen the right agency partner. A rigorous selection process becomes more valuable, not less, when the margin for error shrinks.

Across Australia, independent agencies won 64% of new advertising business in 2025, outperforming the major global networks. That result is only possible because the pitch process levels the playing field. Smaller agencies with sharper thinking can compete and win against much larger rivals.

What AI Is Getting Wrong About the Problem

The arrival of AI tools has changed the agency conversation significantly. Around 73% of companies that have adopted AI assistants have already cut spending on agency content creation. Platforms from OpenAI and Amazon now include planning and creative tools that agencies used to own exclusively.

This has led some to argue that pitching itself is becoming irrelevant. If AI can produce a media plan or a creative concept in minutes, why go through a lengthy agency review?

The answer is that pitching was never just about seeing what an agency could produce. It was always about something harder to measure: how a team thinks, collaborates under pressure, and responds when challenged. That kind of chemistry can't be generated by an algorithm.

As Daniel Shepherd, Chief Strategy Officer at Omnicom Media MENA, puts it: "In a world where AI is quickly replacing many administration roles, the hiring of agencies remains a decidedly human affair."

The Real Pitch Problem Is Brief Quality

Here's a finding that doesn't get nearly enough attention. Around 80% of brand marketers believe they write good briefs. Only 10% of the agencies receiving those briefs agree.

The gap matters enormously. Poor briefs are estimated to waste roughly 33% of marketing budgets through misdirected work. And the pitch process, when run well, is the single best moment to close that gap before expensive execution begins.

A pitch forces both sides to get specific. What's the actual business problem? Who makes the final decision? What does success looks like in 12 months? These questions sound obvious. In practice, they often go unanswered until a well-structured pitch forces them into the open.

Malaysia's Media Specialists Association recognized this in 2025, publishing formal pitch guidelines that mandate minimum timelines of 14 to 28 days. The message from Asia's marketing community is clear: invest in pitch quality, not pitch quantity.

Partnership, Not Procurement

The most overlooked argument for pitching is what it reveals about long-term fit. Brands consistently rank "chemistry" as one of their top four selection criteria, alongside business understanding, creativity, and specialist skills.

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Chemistry is not a soft concept. It's a measurable signal of whether two organizations can actually work together when things get hard. And the only way to assess it under realistic conditions is through a pitch.

Publicis Media's results in China illustrate this well. The agency led the China pitch market in 2025 with US$584 million in new business wins, while simultaneously achieving a 78% client retention rate. Agencies that win pitches rigorously tend to keep clients longer. The selection process and the long-term relationship are connected.

The reform debate happening across APAC right now is about fixing how pitches work, not eliminating them. Compensated pitch models, shorter timelines, clearer decision-making structures: these are improvements to the process, not replacements for it.

As APAC's digital advertising market moves toward US$489 billion by 2029, the consequences of a bad agency partnership grow proportionally. The pitch process, done properly, is still the most reliable way to avoid one.