Posts in Tag: Pitch

The pitch that should have failed

12 years ago, my wife and I landed a surprise hit in the German toy market. As total nobodies in the industry. We ignored every single piece of expert advice. Really, our pitch would fail every single test by every single expert.

It worked out beautifully for us. The reason why is relevant to every pitch and every spotlight moment.

So, what happened?

My wife and I were sitting in our garden, the spring sun shining brightly, when she suddenly said about one of her plush designs: “We should bring these into the hands of many more children. Let’s ask Schmidt Spiele if they want to publish them.”

Schmidt Spiele. One of Germany’s big toy brands.

We had never sold a single toy. We knew nobody in the industry. We had no connections. No industry experience. We were a school teacher and a leadership communication coach.

But still … we sent them an email that afternoon: three paragraphs long with a short video attached.

The next morning, we woke up to a reply asking if we could send prototypes.

A week later, their managing director sat in our living room negotiating a worldwide licensing deal.

I still remember that surreal feeling of sitting there, in our own living room, discussing worldwide licensing rights while prototypes were lying on the table between coffee cups and children’s drawings.

And it all happened because of that tiny video. Do you want to know what was in it? Children playing with the toy. That’s it.

The product was a range of mood-changing plushies. Flip the head and the character transforms. Anxious to cool. Sleepy to party. Angry to happy. We just showed what happened when a child picked it up.

Every expert in the toy industry would have told us our pitch was wrong. We didn’t explain the market opportunity. We didn’t describe how we built it. We didn’t perform our passion for the project or outline our vision for where the brand could go in five years. It contained no market data. No team credentials. No growth forecast. No strategic roadmap. Really, nothing you’d expect from a normal pitch.

So, how on Earth could it work?

The publisher watched that video and saw one thing: their own future. They could see the toy in action. They could see why children would love it. They had enough experience to manufacture it. In other words, they could already see themselves selling it in large amounts.

We didn’t tell them any of that. They saw it.

This is what every great pitch does, whether you’re selling a toy, a strategy, or a vision to your organization. Your audience isn’t asking: are these people smart enough to pull this off? They’re asking one thing: Can I see this working for us? The clearer they can see it, the less you need to persuade.

So, what the video really did was pull the future into the present. It removed the distance between the idea and reality. (In fact, they liked the video so much that they later had an agency re-shoot it and turn it into a professional ad that aired on national TV.)

But there’s one more important detail.

The product itself told exactly one story.

Not twelve. Not five. One.

The toy that changes its mood.

That simple story made the product easy to understand, easy to remember, and easy to pass alonginside meetings. You can almost hear it: “It’s the plushie that changes its mood.”

Done. No explanation needed.

The same principle applies to every strategy you present, every change initiative you propose, every vision you ask people to follow. One clear story, told simply enough that people can clearly pass it along when you’re not in the room.

We used the same two principles (pulling the future into the present and distilling it into a clear pass along message) to land four more deals after that. It became the beginning of an extraordinary chapter in our lives with five consecutive hit products, including The Grumbletroll, Furlocks, Sleepy Caps, and Nuffi, several of them supported by national TV campaigns.

Compare that to the usual dazzling that happens in pitches. You spend months building spectacular decks. Go into incredible detail. Find big words. Overexplain, for example by including the psychology of mood regulation in early childhood. 

When the moment counts, that’s exactly the urge. To impress. To make it look a little fancier. To persuade just a little harder.

Rather than find the simple true story that lets your audience experience the future with your idea in it.

The question is: when your moment counts, will your story make the future feel clear and irresistible?

Keep lighting the path,
Michael