ADGEEK
The craft of winning a pitch and building client trust
Landor’s Lulu Raghavan draws on major brand projects and APAC new business to explain how agencies present value, work with procurement and turn design into business outcomes.
The conversation
Lulu Raghavan discusses pitching, client relationships and design-led business transformation through her work at Landor across APAC. She reflects on building Landor India, the Delhi Airport Terminal 3 project and the Air India brand-refresh pitch, including what the latter taught her about winning a brief.
The conversation examines how to connect design to business outcomes, communicate value when procurement is involved, organise new business across a region and differentiate an agency from consultancies and technology firms. Raghavan also discusses brand transformation, iconic assets and the role of AI in creative work.
Key Takeaways
- Raghavan reflects on Landor’s Air India brand-refresh pitch and what losing a high-profile brief taught her about persuasion.
- She links design-led work to business outcomes and discusses how to present its value to decision makers.
- The conversation covers pitch preparation, memorable leave-behinds and the need to understand client and procurement priorities.
- Raghavan explains how her APAC team organises new business and how agencies can differentiate when clients compare design firms, consultancies and technology companies.
- Employees need to understand and support a brand change before its public launch, because they are among the people responsible for delivering it.
Editorial analysis
An editorial interpretation of the conversation, distinguishing the guest’s arguments from verified business outcomes.
Selling the business value of branding
Lulu Raghavan describes building Landor India as an exercise in explaining what clients were actually buying. Branding could easily be reduced to a logo; her job was to establish its value as a business asset, earn credibility and then justify a premium fee. That required patience with clients undertaking such work for the first time, as well as an ability to distinguish criticism of the work from a judgment of the person presenting it.
Delhi Airport as lived identity
Delhi Airport’s Terminal 3 makes that broader definition tangible. Raghavan recalls a brief to give a glass-and-steel structure a recognisably Indian, Delhi and GMR character. The work began with the passenger journey and extended into visual language, art and spatial interventions. It becomes an example of brand as an experience, rather than a mark applied at the end. Her discussion of measurement is more qualified: corporate branding has many moving parts, so she combines research, relevant cases and an account of how design, product and customer experience contribute to value.
Pitching for trust and delivery confidence
Winning the work also involves more than displaying expertise. Raghavan describes the need for credibility and the comfort that a team will carry a client through change. A pitch should leave a memorable feeling, address the client’s situation and show a convincing process without pretending to deliver the completed solution. Procurement deserves the same explanation of value as the marketing team. Her shift towards understanding negotiators’ pressures replaces an automatic assumption that they simply want a cheaper price; it does not remove the need to protect value or sometimes walk away.
Alignment must precede the brand launch
The conversation keeps returning to alignment. Brand change must be understood internally before an external launch, because employees help deliver it. Win and loss reviews matter even when clients’ feedback is incomplete or arrives late. AI, meanwhile, appears as a thinking partner within strategy, creative work and pitch preparation, not a reason to abandon judgment. Across these subjects, Raghavan treats the quality of the relationship and the quality of the work as connected: the challenge is to make business value understandable, memorable and achievable.
Questions & answers
Why should clients see branding as more than a logo?
Branding must earn its place as a business investment. Raghavan describes the challenge of moving clients beyond logos towards value created through design, products and customer experience.
What did the Delhi airport project prove about brand experience?
Delhi T3 illustrates a brand experienced through a journey, visual language, art and space, rather than only through a logo.
What do clients need from a pitch beyond credentials?
A convincing pitch combines expertise with the comfort that the team can deliver change; easy rapport alone is insufficient.
How can a team make a pitch memorable without theatrics?
Raghavan prepares pitches around what the client will remember and feel, supported by a clear process and homework on the customer experience.
Why is employee buy-in part of the brand launch?
Employees need to understand and support a brand change before its public launch, because they are among the people responsible for delivering it.
Sources & attribution
Original publisher audio (archived enclosure): Original publisher audio (archived enclosure).
Podcast episode on Spotify: Podcast episode on Spotify.
Podcast video on YouTube: Podcast video on YouTube.
Original publication: The Indian AdGeek, Episode 10, featuring Lulu Raghavan; original publisher date: 2025-10-12.
Method and attribution: This analysis and the five Q&As are editorial syntheses, not verbatim statements or substitutes for listening to the original conversation. Guest judgments, examples, forecasts and reported business metrics should not be confused with independently audited findings. Research timestamps do not represent podcast chapter timings.