The Hangover That Landed Us A Major Client
6/18/20266 min
Our guest, Guy Utley CEO of Tall Agency, shares a candid story about winning a major pitch despite being severely hungover from celebrating a "Best Creative Agency" award the night before.
This unexpected success led to a complete transformation in his approach to business presentations, moving away from over-preparation toward more authentic communication.
• Celebrating winning "Best Creative Agency" award led to drinking too much the night before a 9 AM pitch
• Despite being hungover and unable to remember the pitch itself, the presentation was successful
• The partner agency didn't notice anything wrong with the presentation
• They won the account from a major bread company despite the presenter's condition
• The experience transformed his pitching approach from rigid over-preparation to more natural, flexible presentations
• Focusing on knowledge and experience rather than memorised talking points creates more authentic client interactions
• Being too rehearsed can make it difficult to pivot when necessary during presentations
• Main lesson: "If I can win it drunk, then surely I can win it sober"
Don't drink on a school night, even if it's an award celebration. And if you need help planning your diary better, speak to Will Ockenden - he's brilliant at it.
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsChris Norton· Host0:00
So this is my favorite bit.
Guy Utley· Guest0:01
Yeah.
Chris Norton· Host0:02
So you had an, um, a pi- you had a pitch situation where you might have been slightly intoxicated. Is that correct?
Guy Utley· Guest0:09
Mm-hmm. Absolutely intoxicated. Um, yeah. So when you said, like, "Tell me about some mistakes you made in business," I've got lots.
Chris Norton· Host0:18
Yeah.
Guy Utley· Guest0:18
We're 17 years in, in Tall, and I had a business before that for five, six years. So there's lots of mistakes made, but I think... Look, I think you learn off your mistakes, and you pick yourself up, and, and, and hopefully there's positives that come out of that, but we'll talk about this one. So I think there's a couple of things I learned from this, and, and if I'm spreading any advice [laughs] is don't drink on a school night, even if it's an award. So we were out celebrating an award. Um, this was a fair few years ago. This is going back to- What, what award was it? ... sort of 10, 10 years ago. It was, um, Best Creative Agency Award. Um- All right.
Chris Norton· Host0:50
It's a big one, though.
Guy Utley· Guest0:51
It's a big one.
Will Ockenden· Host0:51
Worthy, worthy of celebrating.
Guy Utley· Guest0:52
Yeah, absolutely, and we won it. And then, you know, you've, you've been drinking a couple of beers, and you've had a white wine with your dinner, and then someone brings some red wine, and you wouldn't drink like this normally. You'd have in different drinks, and then you'd have, "Oh, I'll have a whiskey 'cause it's... We're celebrating." The next thing, you're very, very drunk, and you can't remember the taxi home. This was me on a normal Thursday night, completely forgetting at 9:00 AM the next morning I had a pitch. [laughs] So [sighs] it's not like I can call up another creative director in my business and owner 'cause it was- It was already written, right? It was already done. It was booked in and ready to go. Yeah.
Chris Norton· Host1:28
Right.
Guy Utley· Guest1:29
Already written.