What a Rejected Pitch Actually Sounds Like

Noor Fasi: This is The RightUp. I'm Noor Fasi. Today we're doing something we've never done. We have permission to talk through the room tone of a pitch that fell apart in real time. Tomas Reyna was the creative director in that room. Tomas, welcome.

Tomas Reyna: Thanks, Noor. I still can't listen to it without wincing.

Noor Fasi: Take us to the moment it turned.

Tomas Reyna: About eleven minutes in, the client asked who the work was really for. I opened my mouth, and nothing came out.

Noor Fasi: And then?

Tomas Reyna: Thirty seconds of silence. On the recording it sounds like a fan and somebody's pen clicking. Nobody on our side wanted to be the one to fill it.

Noor Fasi: Thirty seconds feels short when you say it.

Tomas Reyna: It isn't. In a pitch room it's a lifetime. You can hear the client decide, somewhere in the middle of it.

Noor Fasi: You did try to recover.

Tomas Reyna: We did, about two minutes later. A good answer, honestly. It just came after they'd already stopped listening.

Noor Fasi: What changed in the studio after that?

Tomas Reyna: We rehearse the hardest question now, out loud, before every pitch. And whoever's closest to the answer is allowed to take it, whatever their title is.

Noor Fasi: Tomas Reyna, thank you for letting us sit in that silence. That's What a Rejected Pitch Actually Sounds Like, on The RightUp.