AMC's The Pitch - The Hive and FKM Clockwork Home Services

Photo from AMC

Next week’s The Pitch, (@ThePitch_AMC) episode 3, will feature two ad agencies competing to win Clockwork Home Services as a client.  The contenders are  The Hive (@The_hive) from Toronto and FKM (@FKMAgency), located in various office in Texas. From the teaser the assignment will be for three different brands; Mister Sparky, Benjamin Franklin Plumbing and One Hour Heating and Air Cooling. They hint at the the briefing - “The task is to develop a tri-branded, integrated promotion that will drive customers to call one of our brands.” The first two episodes have had some pretty tough assignments to crank out in one week, but this one may take the cake. It’s not clear whether or not it will be a complete rebranding or a new ad campaign, but either way it’s a daunting task.

Just like an ad-centric Oscar party, we’re making our prediction on this episode;  The Hive will emerge victorious. Why? Looking at their site,  The Hive is building “buzz” (pun intended) about The Pitch all over the place, whereas FKM only has a few mentions Only the winning agency promotes the hell out of the show? It worked that way for episode 2.

On the other hand, our pattern recognition mode has been switched on and we see that FKM’s About page is very similar in concept to the About page on SK+G’s website; right down to the rollover animation on the photos.  This makes them seem a bit more quirky and web-savvy–traits that have won the previous two clients on The Pitch.  We are still going with The Hive as the victor, but it could go either way.

Perhaps also worth noting is that one of the clients featured on FKM’s website is Waste Management. Yep, the very same WM from Episode 2. Intriguing…does this mean that FKM was scrapped (pun intended) by WM?  This begins to raise questions about how and why AMC picked the agencies that they picked; the connections are a little too apparent.

We at The Next Wave believe in deep insight based creativity and after seeing a few of The Pitches, we’ve become a bit pessimistic. We’re also fairly certain that the ad agency with the best pitch will not be chosen.  Look for the best showmanship and razzle dazzle, not the agency with the profound concept.

We’ll watch the show on Tuesday morning at the office and do our post pitch review like we’ve done for the previous episodes.

Here is the trailer for the episode: