The 7 Types of People Whose Pitches ALWAYS Get Rejected
There are some seemingly-obvious things to avoid doing during your pitch, but yet, they keep happening!
Here are some real-life examples of incidents encountered in actual pitch meetings.
Names have been omitted to protect the guilty.
Lessons to Learn from Bad Cartoon Pitches
Whatever you do, don’t be like these people:
The Chatterboxes – A husband and wife team came in to pitch, but they kept talking, and talking, and talking. I could hardly get a word in! Good thing their pitch was awful.
I’d hate to have to work with them on a daily basis. Passing on that project couldn’t have been easier. Lesson: Let the exec have a chance to ask questions.
The Awful Artist – The pitch wasn’t that great to begin with, but when she showed the corresponding art, it went from a “no” to a “please leave”.
Lesson: Don’t bring lame art that looks like something out of a magazine from 1813.
The Ignorant and Uninformed – This guy hasn’t watched a cartoon in the past two decades, but was passionate in his pitch about talking anthropomorphic balls.
He clearly didn’t know anything about our network or its brand. Lesson: Do your research and watch TV, particularly the network you are pitching to.
The Performer – This guy was an incredible free-style rapper who could literally make up rhymes about whatever was in the room, including the names of my colleague and I. But the idea was definitely not right for us. Lesson:
Again, do your research on the network you’re pitching to!
The Posse – One guy must have invited his entire team with him to his pitch…and failed to mention it to me. It should never take ten people to pitch one idea. It felt like I was being interrogated–and it wasn’t even my pitch! It’s as if they all needed to be there, just in case they had to form Voltron, or some weird version of Voltron.
Leave the family at home.
The Librarian – One guy left an entire multimedia set of reference materials including a thick binder, multiple DVDs, amateur comic books, toy prototypes, and bulky print outs. I don’t want all that extra stuff in my office! Where will my toys sit if your junk takes up my desk space?
Lesson: Keep it simple. Just bring few copies of your pitch document. Maybe a flash drive if needed.
The Namedropper – If you mention a celebrity name in every paragraph, stop–just stop. Please. No one cares. (At least not until your pitch reaches the network’s Public Relations department.) If your concept is half-baked, it makes you seem desperate, even if you actually know that person.
Lesson: celebrity endorsements can’t save a terrible idea. (Celebrities pitch bad ideas too.)
