Lessons in creativity from The 2017 Creative Shootout
The Creative Shootout -fast becoming the UK pitching platform – asked their shortlist of 8 creative teams to design a campaign for Time to Change led by mental health charity partners Mind and Rethink Mental Health.
Live from BAFTA HQ
WardWilliams Creative are honoured to have been a supporter of The Creative Shootout from the beginning. In its inaugural year we were blown away by the talent and creativity of the pitches. This year a change of venue and a few tweaks to the format gave an overall impression of raised stakes. Johnny Pitt gave us a glamorous setting, the use of BAFTA HQ stage and screen, and the addition of an audience vote. Like last year, there was much to admire, a great deal to learn and a whole lot of creative camaraderie.
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Time to Talk about Mental Health
Jo Loughran, Director of Time to Change set the brief: Develop a creative campaign aimed at the relatively cold 22-44 year old C1C2D male demographic, without losing the current warm audience. The ultimate aim; to make “Time to Talk Day” famous and bring an end to mental health discrimination.
Alternative Facts: Creatives like to watch porn and Andy Garner goes to the toilet 4 times a day
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There were some unexpected revelations from the day. Andy Garner from Mischief Untied confidently shared his toilet habits with us! And thanks to a show of hands survey from Text 100, it was discovered that a room full of creatives are more likely to own up to watching porn than to being in debt. In amongst the humour there were some staggering statistics highlighting the widespread issue of mental health, and some home truths about how we communicate:
- Mental Health Costs the UK £100 billion per year,
- Mental health is the single biggest disability in the UK.
- An adult sends, on average, 200 texts per month
- Men within the demographic prefer to communicate via digital media
- An adult spends on average 20 mins a day on FaceBook
- On average each individual will speak 30,000 words a day but only 17% is retained
- 40% of men won’t talk about mental health
Storytelling on the big screen
This year we were able to see the entries from each team that won them a place at the final. This was particularly effective as we were able to see how the pitches had developed and a great way to introduce each team to the audience.
Healthy Competition
As always the pitches were of exceptional class. Entertaining and engaging, balancing humour with emotion whilst tackling the brief in different ways. FleishmanHillard Fishburn created a beautiful “Security Blanket” which earned them a place in the final.
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Mischief City reminded us that “Depression is a cold hollowed out feeling” and their pitch encouraged us to #BreaktheSilence. They also put some powerful statistics behind the anecdotal “Men don’t listen”. They informed us that men have an attention span of only 6 minutes and if the subject is not relevant to them, they won’t engage.
Text 100 confronted us with the taboo subjects of debt, gambling and pornography. Drawing parallels with mental health the aim was to highlight the fear of reactions and how conscious we are of how others may perceive us. Text 100 encouraged us to have #NoShame.
Bottle reminded us of the power of 4 from the army, to firefighters, to golf teams. Their idea was to utilise the love of competition men thrive off and use that as corner stone. Their campaign resulted in a “No man left behind” team of 4 obstacle course.
Wire focused on the power of words and asked us to “Mind your language”. Their idea focused on disruption with a campaign that was #NotAllThere. Imagine a world with vital elements “not all there” – a newspaper without a headline, Ant without Dec, Football matches with no goalies and MacDonalds with no Big Mac.
In 3rd place Ready 10 focused on Wattsapp/friendship groups and how men deal with communication about bad news or life problems. Their campaign was an “All Talk” day engaging trusted brands as a gateway for men to start talking.
Ready 10: “Men don’t talk. They communicate, but they don’t talk”
Hotwire came in 2nd place by giving prevalence to listening over talking. Encouraging us to #tunein their campaign included taking over digital billboards and newspapers with blank content, pointing out that this is a typical conversation about mental health.
Hurrah for Toilet Humour
Mischief United took 1st prize for the second year running. Their campaign was inspired by the 1hr 42 minutes on average per day we all spend on the toilet. Mischief United saw this as a “Time to Think.” They asked us to “Get Arsed about Mental Health” with their bespoke toilet paper that would be available in cinemas, pubs and gyms on Time to Talk day. An interactive banner will ask us to “Wipe away negativity”, an interactive game to erase negative words surrounding mental health and a host of other ideas that encouraged us to “Give a s**t!”
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In it to win it
Thank you to Johnny Pitt and Launch PR for another inspiring event. Make sure The Creative Shootout 2018 is in your calendar. The next submission will open in September – don’t worry we’ll remind you. This is an unmissable opportunity to experience live pitching which is guaranteed to inspire. Hope to see you there.
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