Two pitches, one editor, one bad afternoon
The consumer tech team pitches a gadget review to a technology editor on Tuesday morning. The B2B team, working for a software client, pitches the same editor an interview with their CEO on Tuesday afternoon. On Wednesday the healthcare team sends a data story because the editor once wrote about health apps.
The editor replies to the third one, copying in the other two, and asks whether your agency has a system for this. It is a fair question. Each team did its research properly and each pitch was reasonable on its own. Together they look like a spray-and-pray agency, and the editor now filters your domain more harshly than before.
Why teams cannot see each other
Most agencies are organised by client or sector, and each team owns its lists and inboxes. That structure is sensible for client work and blind for journalist relationships, because journalists cut across your sectors.
- Each team exports its own list from the media database, so the same journalist appears on several.
- Pitches go from individual mailboxes and are invisible to other teams.
- Any shared pitch tracker is a spreadsheet that people update when they remember.
- Big titles and national desks attract pitches from almost every team.
- Busy weeks, such as the run-up to a trade show, make overlaps more likely exactly when nobody has time to check.
The damage builds slowly
One overlap is embarrassing. Repeated ones change how a journalist treats your agency. They open fewer of your emails, answer more slowly and give your clients less benefit of the doubt. Because each team only sees its own results, the pattern takes a long time to notice, and it tends to get blamed on the client's story rather than the agency's habits.
There is a client cost too. If the editor gives the software CEO interview a pass because the agency already sent two pitches that week, that client paid for a shot the agency wasted.
How we build the pitch log and warning
- We connect the mailboxes your teams use for pitching and recognise messages sent to journalist addresses held in your contact records.
- Each pitch is logged with the journalist, the sender, the client, the date and the subject line, visible to everyone in the agency.
- An Outlook or Gmail add-in checks recipients when someone writes a pitch and shows a warning if another team has pitched that journalist within a window you set.
- The warning names the colleague and the client, so the sender can message them before sending rather than guess.
- A weekly view per journalist shows how many pitches they received from the agency and from which teams, which is useful for heads of department.
- For national desks and key titles you can set a softer rule, such as requiring a named person to agree before a pitch goes out.
| Situation | What the sender sees |
|---|---|
| No recent pitch from anyone | Nothing, send as normal |
| Pitched by another team within your window | Warning with colleague, client and date |
| Journalist on a protected list | Prompt to check with the named relationship owner |
| Open exclusive offered by a colleague | Banner showing the offer and its status |
The warning never blocks a send. It gives the information at the moment it matters and leaves the judgement with the executive.
What a busy week looks like afterwards
In trade show week the B2B executive starts a pitch to the technology editor and sees a note: pitched yesterday by the consumer team for a gadget client. She sends a Slack message to her colleague, they agree the consumer pitch goes first and she holds hers until next week with a stronger angle.
Heads of department look at the weekly view on Friday and see which journalists are being approached too often. That becomes a conversation in the Monday meeting rather than an apology email from an account director.
Does this happen at your agency?
- A journalist has told you they are hearing from several of your teams.
- There is a shared pitch tracker, but it is always out of date.
- Teams only find out about each other's pitches from coverage reports.
- Nobody owns relationships with key national desks.
- Trade show and awards weeks produce the most overlaps.