How can you pitch an ad campaign to a company when you do not work for one?

[The Gay Argentian Seal]

And how can you make sure they do not take the idea if they like it?

[texasirishrose]

First I would find out who to speak to and make an appointment with him. Once you get in the door you have the opportunity to show him your ideas. I don't think you can guarantee they won't steal it,but it would be very poor conduct,and not good advertising when you reported it. Make sure you have everything ready to present,if you do get an appointment.

[natedog]

To be honest, I don't work in the ad campaign industry. I create software applications like http://tgethr.com. But we have a very similar need sometimes to communicate with folks about an idea who may have never heard of us before.

Number one. Companies usually enjoy hearing from their customers. So in this case, are you a customer of this company? If you are then it becomes much easier to craft an email to someone at the company about how you are a customer and what their product or service has helped you do.

Then you can share an idea you have about helping them sell more of that product. If your not currently a customer, then yes, your pitch becomes a bit more like 100s of other pitches companies get for services from complete strangers. But if your not a customer, maybe your pitch could be retooled to work for a company you are a customer of.

After all, you've invested in these companies with money time and attention and want them to succeed. You have a relationship with them. And many of these companies want to see their customers continue to succeed so they can remain customers. It's pretty easy to find someone's contact information on the web. Perhaps they blog or use twitter. Or find them on linkedin and use an InMail.

As for sharing ideas. I wouldn't worry that much. People are obsessed about having ideas stolen, and that obsession hurts them because they don't share the idea early enough with people who'd actually be making a purchase decision or investment of an implementation of that idea.

Paul Graham has a great article about "ideas" and more specifically startup ideas that you might feel is a strong parallel. He says:

"The fact that there's no market for startup ideas suggests there's no demand. Which means, in the narrow sense of the word, that startup ideas are worthless."

http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html

And finally. Are you a creative person? Is their part of the ad campaign that you've actually implemented in some form. People are pretty poor judges of ideas when they are just words. If you have your ideas in some kind of visual form, I think your odds go up insanely that someone can get the gist of what your trying to convey.

[markpappas1]

If your speaking in terms of soliciting an ad idea to a company the first thing you want to do is register a company name and call yourself an ad agency. Get a DBA, register with your county. You must have some interest in doing ad copyrighting.

Pitching a certain company just might get you in the door for other companies.