The Disappearing Pitch: How a Magician Cost Us the Client Artwork

Embracing Marketing Mistakes

Welcome to Embracing Marketing Mistakes, the world’s leading irreverent podcast for senior marketers who are tired of the polished corporate b*llshit.

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Embracing Marketing Mistakes

The Disappearing Pitch: How a Magician Cost Us the Client

May 14, 2026 • Prohibition PR

When James Thomlinson decided to “bring some magic” to a high-stakes pitch for InterContinental Hotels Group, he meant it, literally.

The plan? A magician disguised as a team member, ready to wow the client with a “reappearing newspaper” trick. The result? Cringe, confusion, and a fast lesson in what not to do when pitching creative ideas.

In this hilarious and humbling episode, James shares how a failed attempt at showmanship turned into one of his biggest professional lessons and how he eventually won the client with a smarter, more authentic approach.

If you’ve ever pushed creativity a little too far in your marketing, this episode will hit home.

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Setting Up The Pitch Disaster

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Obviously this this in this show is all about marketing mistakes and you you're a bit of a black belt in the the pitch scenario.

SPEAKER_02 0:06

Um have you made any black belt and make a mistake?

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Yeah, absolutely. I'm sure you've learnt a lot from pitching. Have you had any mistakes that you've learned from um while you've been pitching yourself?

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Yeah, so many mistakes, and uh you always got to learn from your mistakes. I can think of um two or three funny ones. Um it ended up being a positive. So after three attempts to uh pitch to Intercontinental Hotel Group in their European comms team, uh we ended up winning business at one of my old agencies. Um but prior to that, I think it was the second time uh we pitched, I had this what I thought was genius, but it's actually a terrible idea to bring a magician in disguise into uh into the pitch. Okay, um, and he was he he was pretending to be you know one of the team, uh account director. And then at one point in the presentation we got to the press office part of it. Um it was quite early on, and uh we were talking about the target media they wanted to get in, and he's like, Right, I'm now gonna show you exactly how we're gonna get you into the Financial Times or something, something along this. And stood up, and I don't know, you've probably seen this on YouTube or something, where yeah, you fold up, you rip up the paper, the Financial Times, you do it lots of little squares, and then you just go and then so they're watching

The Magician Gimmick Backfires

SPEAKER_00 1:44

this guy rip the Financial Times up and then blows it out and then sticks it back together again, and it's like a a tonar moment that just was like a buck moment. They're like, What and then and then he he I he had something else to do, and I was just like look that you know, I'm just gonna call it obviously it didn't work, you know. We try the theme was around magic, like bringing the magic into something.

SPEAKER_02 2:12

I was gonna ask what the relevance is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Magic's great, but why?

SPEAKER_01 2:17

Did he literally do it? And then he went, and then nothing happened, and it was like tumbling.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

And you all sat there going, pretty much And we just we just called it then, and it's like yeah, we tried something, it didn't work. Uh you can go now if if you want. We weren't sure whether we should leave the room or stay there and just witness.

SPEAKER_02 2:36

It's a proper walk of shame, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 2:38

The magician lives. Um that that didn't work. We ended up getting lucky when we won it because um the next brief was around the influencer campaign, and we we produced uh these little uh you know snippets from influencers saying we really want to work with IHG on this campaign, and um so it was really you know, really nice show we had good good network of contacts. And then the end one was Proudlock from made in Chelsea, and the corporate affairs director and his wife watched that and they their favourite was was Proudlock and it um so oh my god, you know, you know him and that worked really well, and we ended up uh winning the business, uh which was which was good.

SPEAKER_02 3:22

Nice. That's making me cringe a bit thinking about that magician, even though I I like the addition.

People on this episode

Chris Norton

Host

Will Ockenden

Host