Agency pitch competitor research wins new business when it gives the room something no other agency brings: a documented read of what the prospect's competitors say, which audiences they crowd and which opening nobody owns. Build that read in days, anchor the creative to one opening, and present it as commercial evidence. Clients buy the diagnosis before they buy the idea.
Key takeaways
- Pitching is expensive: European agencies spend about €43,800 on an average new-business pitch, so the research has to earn its place.
- Creative alone rarely separates a pitch when every agency in the room shows similar work; a sharper read of the category does.
- SAMY, KPI Media and a SOMIN-built Senoko Energy pitch show three uses of the same data: reframing, speed and whitespace.
- The most persuasive competitor evidence is traceable, sized and honest about its confidence.
Why do creative-led pitches lose?
Because they look alike. When every agency answers the same brief with the same category conventions, the client has little to choose on except chemistry and price.
It is also an expensive way to lose. The EACA's 2025 cost-of-pitching study of 412 agencies put the average new-business pitch at €43,804, with five to eight people on each pitch contributing more than 44 hours apiece. The same study found only four in ten winning creative ideas are implemented by the client.
How clients find agencies is shifting as well. RSW/US's 2026 outlook reports that the share of clients finding new firms through networking fell from 73% in 2022 to 58% in 2025, and that clients increasingly want AI-driven insight and analytics rather than vague promises. A pitch that opens with evidence speaks to that buyer.
SOMIN's listening data suggests why sameness happens. In SOMIN's audience-research workspace, an insight built on 65 posts about inefficient advertising strategies (2,061 engagements) reads "To truly connect, dare to diverge from the trending path". Its angle rests on Herd Behaviour Theory: brands follow prevailing trends without checking whether they fit their audience. Pitch decks drift the same way.
What competitor research should a pitch include?
Enough to answer one question convincingly: where can this client win that its competitors are not already standing? Everything in the research should serve that answer.
| Research layer | Question it answers | What to show in the room |
|---|---|---|
| Share of voice by theme | What does the category talk about, and how much? | Theme shares for the client and its rivals over three to six months |
| Personas and propositions | Who is each competitor talking to, with what promise? | A competitor-by-persona grid with sample posts |
| Tensions | What problem does the audience say it has? | The tension in the audience's own terms, with its sample size |
| Audience proxy | Is the audience talking about something the category ignores? | Creator or community share on the same themes |
| Whitespace | Which openings are crowded, open or worth a cheap test? | Two or three territories, scored and ranked |
| Proof of concept | Will the idea land? | Concepts built on the opening, pre-scored where possible |
How did SAMY, KPI Media and Senoko use competitor data?
Each used the same kind of category read for a different job: SAMY to reframe the conversation, KPI Media to make pitching affordable, and the Senoko pitch to find whitespace a challenger could claim.
SAMY: from creative services to commercial impact
SAMY, an independent creative agency, was pitching Nightcap Group, the UK hospitality operator, against established agencies with polished concept decks. Instead of opening with concepts, SAMY ran Nightcap's category through SOMIN's Brand Tracker, turned the read into a point of view with Perspective Studies, and anchored the brief to it with Expressions. The SAMY case study records a multi-million-pound retainer, campaign planning 12 times faster (about 13 minutes per brief) and click-through prediction at 78% accuracy, three times the human estimate.
KPI Media: pitch prep as a margin problem
KPI Media, a Singapore performance agency, ran pitch preparation as a one-week, three-person sprint. With SOMIN at the front of the process, the KPI Media case study shows prep falling to two days and one person, cost per pitch dropping from $4,000 to $1,000, and a new client closed at $5,000 a month in retainer revenue. The agency was live on the platform within one to three days.
Senoko Energy: a challenger pitch built on whitespace
For a Senoko Energy pitch, SOMIN read six months of organic content from Senoko and four Singapore rivals, plus a four-creator panel standing in for home owners and families. The category spent an average 46.1% of its voice defending commodity pricing, while creator content for that audience clustered 62.7% on environmental and conservation stewardship. Senoko's own stewardship share had fallen from 20% in March 2026 to zero in its last 90 days.
The Senoko Energy pitch turned that gap into three scored territories, a 39-post, 13-week calendar and a 27-concept creative library, all traceable to 18 SOMIN studies.
What are clients telling agencies they want?
Proof of business outcomes, not activity. SOMIN's ads-optimisation workspace keeps returning to the gap between what agencies report and what advertisers need.
Its moments-of-truth model surfaces the thought "I need to evaluate my agency based on real results, not just ROAS or CPA" for a persona working through the profitability gap in advertising. A related insight, "When purpose aligns with performance, true impact emerges", rests on Goal Setting Theory: advertisers find their objectives do not match the metrics their agencies prioritise (36 engagements across 10 posts).
The audience-research workspace adds scale. A study of two years of organic posts from advertising agencies and research brands (191 posts) has as its largest tension theme "Navigating Inefficiencies in Modern Advertising Strategies", with a sample of 65. For a pitch, the lesson is that the competitor read should end in a commercial claim the client can hold you to: the audience the category is missing, and what owning it could be worth.
How do you build a data-led pitch in a week?
- Fix the competitive set. Four to six brands the client actually loses customers to, plus an audience proxy such as a creator panel or community.
- Pull three to six months of content. Organic posts and live ads, so you see what brands say and what they pay to say.
- Decode it. Tag every post by persona, proposition, tension and tone, so share of voice is counted rather than guessed.
- Score the openings. Compare client, competitor and audience share on each theme, and mark each as crowded, open or a cheap test.
- Write the point of view in one sentence. If it needs a paragraph, you have not chosen yet.
- Build the creative on the opening. Concepts, a calendar and, where you can, a predicted performance score for each concept.
- Keep the trail. Every slide should be able to show the posts behind it when the client asks.
SOMIN's platform for agencies runs steps two to six in one workflow, which is how a category read that once took weeks fits inside a pitch timeline.
What makes competitor evidence persuasive in the room?
Specificity and honesty. A number with its sample size and date beats a confident adjective, and a flagged weakness beats a hidden one.
The Senoko deck is a useful model. It labels its third territory as a low-confidence test, and it reports a prior-year check that pointed the same way while noting it rested on only eight posts. Telling a client what you are less sure of gives them a reason to trust the claims you are sure of.
FAQ
How long should competitor research for a pitch take?
Days, not weeks. KPI Media cut its pitch preparation from one week with three people to two days with one, which left more of the timeline for the idea itself.
What competitor data can agencies use in a pitch?
Publicly available content is the safe base: competitors' organic social posts, ads visible in public ad libraries, websites and public creator content. Analysed together over three to six months, that is enough to map share of voice and whitespace.
How many competitors should a pitch analysis cover?
Usually four to six direct rivals, plus an audience proxy. The Senoko Energy pitch read four Singapore competitors and a four-creator panel over six months.
Do clients care about data in a creative pitch?
They care when the data explains the idea. In SAMY's Nightcap pitch, a competitor-led read moved the conversation from creative services to measurable business impact, and the agency won a multi-million-pound retainer.
Before your next pitch, run the category read before the creative kick-off, not after it. Choose one opening, put its evidence on two slides, and let the creative team build from there. If the research cannot fit the time you have, fix that first: in 2026 the agencies that win are the ones that arrive with the sharpest read of the client's market in the room.
