o more free lunches, when it comes to pitches', is what the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI), a regulatory industry body of 84 advertising agencies, is saying to advertisers in the country. The story so far. When a company calls for a pitch, a number of agencies participate in the pitching process. They spend large amounts of time, energy and even money to come up with a creative and strategic presentation for the client and are usually not compensated for the same.

In fact, sometimes, the advertiser may scrap all the ideas and not hire any agency for the job, after going through the entire pitch. A client may even go to the extent of plagiarising the ideas presented in the pitch, without actually hiring any agency.... more