Dictionary.com has named “maxxing” its 2026 Word of the Year. If it hasn’t crossed your feed yet, it’s short for maximising and gets attached to almost anything someone is pushing as far as it will go. Sleep, skincare, productivity, you name it.
The agency world has its own version, and it picked up a name earlier this year when Publicis Groupe CEO Arthur Sadoun called out what’s become known as pitchmaxxing, where agencies stretch their promises to win new business.
None of this is new. Overpromising in pitches is as old as pitching itself. What has changed is the nature of the promises. A few years ago it was usually the senior team who presented beautifully and then disappeared once the contract was signed. These days it’s just as likely to be a claim that AI will halve turnaround times or is the secret sauce for guaranteed coverage, a fee that seems too good to be true, or a measurement dashboard that sounded far more sophisticated in the pitch than it looks three months in.
It’s easy to see how it happens. Pitches are competitive, procurement teams push hard on price, and the agency that sounds most impressive on the day often walks away with the business. The trouble is that a pitch is only the start of the relationship, and whatever was promised in that room has to be delivered for years afterwards. An agency might win a client by overpromising, but it’s unlikely to keep them for long.
For tech marketers heading into 2027 agency reviews, a few simple questions can cut through a lot of it.
Ask who will be working on your account each week and ask to meet them. If the answer is vague, or the people in the room won’t be the people doing the work, you’ve learnt something useful.
Ask how the agency uses AI and where an experienced person checks the work. Any good agency uses it now. What you want to know is who is making the judgement calls, and how you’ll see those efficiencies in the work itself.
Ask to speak to existing clients, ideally ones who’ve been with the agency for a few years. They’ll have seen how the agency handles a delayed launch or a story that didn’t land the way everyone hoped, and they’ll usually tell you more than a case study ever will.
And look at tenure. An agency that keeps clients for five, ten or twenty years has had to deliver on what it promised, over and over again.
That last point is close to our hearts. Einsteinz spent 24 years as the ANZ agency of record for a NASDAQ-listed technology company, through several global agency reviews. Sure, we know how to pitch well, but it was the results and the relationship that kept us there. Anyone thinking about working with us is welcome to talk to our clients directly, and we’re always happy to make the introduction.