So, you’ve written your pilot script and pitch deck and have gotten your submission email in the best shape you can. The next step: Sending it to an Acquisitions Executive. But who is this person, and why is it worth spending some time to consider who they are?

Some will tell you that an Acquisitions Executive is a person who relishes every opportunity to say “no,” but happily, this is not the case. These executives are always hunting for the next script/deck/pitch to WOW them. But once they’ve found a project they like, they often need to convince the rest of the acquisitions team. This may require convincing the company decision-makers that this project is worth investing time and money. Sometimes there are even more steps that need to be taken before something gets acquired by a big company involving strategy, marketing, genre, and format-specific departments, etc.

Sound complicated? There’s an easy way to simplify this. Who will ultimately decide a show’s success? The audience.

Make them audience member #1

Your goal is to create something that will ultimately be shared with and watched by an audience. This is who your acquisitions executive is most interested in impressing. If an acquisitions exec. can clearly see and feel what about your show will appeal to an audience, this will make them consider passing your project up the chain at their company. Easiest way to do this? Treat your acquisitions executive as “audience-member-number-1”.

If you consider your executive as an audience member at home “watching” the show you’re pitching, it can make the difference from an informative but ultimately bland pitch into something that is already entertaining and engaging. This is more than just saying, “this project will appeal to *gender* between *generic age group* that like *list popular shows that have already been made*." You need to demonstrate this in your work.

You’ve heard of “show, don’t tell” when it comes to your screenwriting? Same principle here. Make the reader feel the same way you want your audience to feel. If you’re writing a comedy pitch, don’t tell them, “trust me, it’ll be really funny” - make them laugh! If it’s a drama with plot twists - throw the reader off balance when they think they understand your show!

You’re a storyteller – Show it

You’re not just pitching your project, you’re pitching yourself as a storyteller. See this as an opportunity to prove this to the person you’re pitching to. Sometimes pitches get bogged down into becoming a dispassionate list of “events.” But audiences don’t get attached to “events”, they get attached to characters and their journeys. If your pitch has become a list of events, re-frame this so that it is told from the perspective of your characters, their development, and their decisions - good and bad. When describing your world, don’t think in generic terms, but think about expressing what it would be like to be one of your characters living in this world, as that will be how audiences will experience it.

Even if it's a contemporary setting, the New York that Kimmy Schmidt lives in may as well be a different planet to the one inhabited by Harvey Spector. Immerse your executive in the world you’re creating and let them get to know your characters, their hopes, and their struggles. Your key themes will be what keeps your reader from getting lost in all this, so use it as the thing that brings your pitch together.

Turning a “meh” into a "must read"

Treating your acquisitions executive as your first audience member and making them feel and engage in the same way you want your audience to feel and engage with the show will go a long way to making them understand what a wider audience will get from it. This can make the difference between an executive saying, “this may be interesting,” to going into their next acquisitions meeting and saying, “you’ve got to read this”! Moments like this are rare, but as an acquisitions executive, when you receive a project where the creatives have put this work in and you are left genuinely entertained by a pitch, the call telling the writers that we’d like to introduce them to the team and discuss it further feels better than any “no.”

It’s these calls that your exec really wants to make. Considering your audience, be it that one exec or millions of viewers, can make the difference.

Contributor and Stage 32 Thought Leader Ewan Dunbar is the Head of Development and Acquisitions at Disrupting Influence and has helped writers get their projects into development at Netflix, Amazon, MGM, European Broadcasting Partners, and independent distributors. He'll be answering your questions LIVE in an AMA on Stage 32. And, if you like the tips Ewan shared here, be sure to check out his upcoming lab, where you'll receive one-on-one mentoring with Ewan as you craft your TV series pitch!

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