This isn’t a long or complicated blog, but I suppose I do have to start with a quick jargonbuster for people not familiar with the concept of tissue meetings:  these are interim meetings during an agency pitch process, called by clients and taking place roughly half-way through the time available, to make sure that a) the agency has actually started work on the project and b) the agency’s thoughts are progressing roughly in the direction that the client wants them to.  Such meetings are of course treated with fear and resentment by agencies, who remain very unsure how to handle them:  do you give good tissue and run the risk of having little more to add on pitch day itself, or do you give disappointing tissue and run the risk of creating swirling clouds of doubt and anxiety over your abilities which may be hard to dissipate later?

Anyway, having said all that, I know very little about horse racing but I do know that on the whole, it’s a mistake to go to the front too early.  If you’re ten lengths clear with four or five furlongs to go, the chances are that you’ve shot your bolt and most of the rest of the field will come charging past you on the run-in.

The same is pretty definitely true of tissue meetings.  Take my two recent examples.  In one, I was part of an agency pitch team:  we gave great tissue but lost the pitch ten days later, the clients saying they were disappointed that our thinking hadn’t moved on more.  In the other, I was actually organising the pitch on behalf of the client, and after the tissue meetings we all shook our heads gloomily and agreed that one of the agencies was well behind the others:  inevitably over the following week or ten days or so they did an absolute shitload of excellent work, came storming through on the rails and won by a distance.

So that’s it.  I said it wasn’t long or complicated.  If you’re in an agency and you’re asked to do a tissue meeting, keep the very large majority of your powder dry – you’ll gain far more than you’ll lose by keeping all the best bits for the pitch itself.

Or alternatively, of course, totally ignore the client’s objectives in calling the meeting, and give the brief virtually no thought until afterwards