Jen Woodward is a Junior Creative for the Havas Lynx Group and has recently taken part in Pitch Perfect, the final part of our Graduate Scheme here at Lynx.

I joined Lynx just over two years ago and began the Grad Scheme process alongside a great bunch of like-minded, enthusiastic colleagues. The process began with Worksmarts, a 3-day intensive set of workshops delivered by our most senior and experienced members of staff around the perfect pitch process and all that goes into it. During this we were placed into teams, which is where ‘Seven peas in a squad’ were born. We had a rough ride during Worksmarts, always just being pipped to the post. So Pitch Perfect was our second chance.

The five peas were made up of myself, Casey Lloyd, Rebecca Brookfield, Olivia Jones and Babs Comoglio. (Sadly team members Vicky Humphries and Nicola Fletcher had a real life pitch to attend to, which you could say left us a little pea-d off!) During Worksmarts, we’d been given a fictional brief, which was to create a patient campaign for NZT (the drug from ‘Limitless’ for anyone who is familiar with the film). We began by creating a CBI and expanding this into a creative brief. Now, during Pitch Perfect, it was time to solve the brief over 2 days and present our ideas to not just one, but six of the Company Directors.

We began day one with an intro from Havas Lynx Managing Partner, Steve Nicholas, who told us to have fun and enjoy the next three days – this was not what we were thinking at 1am in Department X the following evening! But all in all, we did have fun, and it was a great three days. Hard, hard work. But great fun.

The next two days were spent working solidly through the brief together and tackling every part of the presentation as a team. It was really great to see how much everyone had progressed since we’d last worked together and seeing everyone’s strengths and interests. By working so closely as a team it meant that we learnt huge amounts from one another, and all had a go at each bit of the brief.

Interweaved through the two days were two valuable sessions from Havas Lynx Associate Director, Lisa Jeary and Creative Director, Phil Howells. We also had a visit from a ‘Pitch Doctor’ to help us develop our ideas. In our case, this was Head of Strategy, Insights and Planning, Claire Knapp. Claire did an amazing job at answering any questions we had as well as giving us valuable advice.

Day three, ‘Pitch day’ came around very quickly. We were all at the lovely Great John Street hotel in a fancy boardroom with an even fancier breakfast spread. Unfortunately, due to the amount of pre-pitch nerves in the room, not much of the breakfast was actually eaten! We were up first, and thanks to a lot of hard work and a few late nights, I was confident our team had everything covered in the time frame, but the nerves still kicked in!

Everything went to plan, and the hard work was indeed worth it as we won ‘Pitch Perfect’ (wahoo, finally!). The Directors didn’t give us as easy ride though, and asked more and more awkward questions. But now we know what to expect in the real world and we’re ready to take on the next client pitch. The day was topped off with lunch, followed by drinks at Cloud 23 – but we were still on cloud 9.