Spec Work Just Got Cheap. So Did The Pitch.
Spec work was always terrible economics and it survived because it was self-limiting. Producing finished-looking ideas for free cost real money, so agencies rationed how far they would take an unpaid pitch. That ration has gone.
What replaced it is not less pitching. It is more pitching, at a higher apparent finish, for the same fee, which is the worst of the available outcomes for the people doing it.
Why The Spec Work Limit Mattered
It was the only pressure keeping pitch scope honest. A client asking for three fully realised films knew what that request cost, and moderated it. When the marginal cost of the fourth route falls close to zero, the request stops being moderated and the expectation resets permanently.
Every efficiency an agency finds in a pitch is absorbed as a new baseline within about two rounds.
What Gets Lost In A Cheap Pitch
Judgement, mostly. A pitch that once carried one idea taken seriously now carries six taken quickly, and the discipline of choosing was where the thinking happened. Clients are then asked to pick from a menu rather than buy a point of view, which is a different and less valuable service.
Where It Might Break
The IPA's Agency Census 2025 found 88.3% of UK agencies saying AI has considerably impacted how they work. If that efficiency lands entirely in unpaid work, it will not show up in margin, and the pitch process is where the industry has always discovered what it is prepared to give away.
More from The AI Shift.