So I was watching AMC and being someone who wanted to get into advertising for a while when I saw a spot for a show called The Pitch. I immediately sat up and started to pay attention. The series lands on Monday April 30th at 9/8c. You can already watch the entire first episode in its entirety on AMC or by doing a Google search.
So the premise of this show is to see 2 advertising agencies compete in a battle to win a specific account. The introduction to the series comes to us via Subway who are looking to expose their often forgotten breakfast menu. Subway does breakfast, I didn’t know that either.
Actually I have never seen anyone order coffee from them either. Anyway the CMO wants to convince the ever cheap 18-24 year old crowd to get breakfast at Subway. I say good luck because as a former student my breakfast usually became lunches by the time I wake up. Really I want to see how each team approaches the situation.
The first episode is about doing the next big Subway campaign. The two agencies in the smack down are McKinny, a mid-sized agency in North Carolina and WDCW an agency born in the land of stars L.A. who have worked on Subway’s rival Quiznos.
Here is the trailer for episode 1:
I enjoyed this post by Court of WDCW about his experience with producers. If you read his post he tells you what most reality TV show watchers know No Drama = No Air Time. I wonder when they said this was supposed to be more a docu-drama than a reality TV show in the vein of The War Room if anyone actually believed it (I doubt it).
The show only spent 12 minutes in the first episode covering in Court’s words “the formation of the strategy, creative development, production and any sort of interesting tales that popped up along the way at each agency.” So for brevity’s sake they had to cut and simplify the story.
Which means all those cool nuggets of story got thrown out and or simplified. That meant the boring stuff like Court presence got put in the background where all those elevator tunes I think come to live.I wish we could some of those other stories that got left out and would act as a web series of sorts to fill in some of the gaps.
They do some of that with a few pieces on the website but I just wish we could get more than just a simple snapshot. If I were doing this show I would think of using a web series to cover the structure of the creative process.
I think with the amount of content never aired there is so much that to do with it. So much content left that online folks like me are always hungry for.
My one question is how those cynical folks in ad agencies will have to say about it. Will they cheer or walk away with a sneer. Will they take a gun to all the gaps they find and how close the premise mirrors reality. That will be one conversation I can’t wait to see if only because I never got into the industry.