Now Go Create is excited to be involved in a brand new creative awards launched today. The Creative Shootout will see 6 teams go head-to-head on a live creative challenge in one day, with judges from in-house and PR agencies and support from the advertising industry including Paul Bainsfair, Director General, IPA, Simon Redfern, EMEA Director of Public Affairs, Starbucks and our very own Founder Claire Bridges.
The idea was conceived by Launch PR Founder, Johnny Pitt, who wants to shake up the way creativity is judged in the PR industry and beyond. Now Go Create jumped at the chance to be involved and we’ve been involved since the early stages. Johnny said “Claire’s a very well respected creative force in our industry. I’m delighted she and Now Go Create are involved in the first ever Creative Shootout – it looks set to break the mould. Claire is a great mix of fun, inspiration and empathy – so important when leading the creative process.”
PR teams from agency or in-house can enter at www.creativeshootout.com from today until 6th November 2015. Entry is £99 and includes two tickets to come for the live final. The shortlist of 6 will be whittled down from the entries which themselves must be creative – just a speedy 60 seconds for teams to convince the judging panel and Unicef why they have the creative mettle to make the shortlist. The live final will be in January 2016.
Jane Cooper is Communications and Brand Director at Unicef UK. The six successful pitch teams will work on a brief for Unicef. She says “for us, creativity is a major driver in our organisation. It’s critical we’re creative in our thinking to help shine a light on the millions of children in danger around the world today who need our support. The Creative Shootout is a brilliant idea that celebrates great thinking in a radical new format. It’ll hopefully help change children’s lives, too.”
Claire is delighted to be involved in these new creativity awards which in itself is a disruptive and new approach to how creativity is judged: “I love the idea that the creativity will unfold in real-time and the teams involved will have to manage the process in a way that is much more like what happens in the real-world. In our day-to-day creativity training we give people the skills to help them think more quickly on their feet – this is going to be the ultimate test of that. Most awards judge the results of creative work, these awards will judge the ways are generated, shaped and honed, and of course pitched. That feels different and fresh and I’m really excited to see it all comes together.”
“I think one of the biggest challenges will be pulling together as a team, finding a robust insight to run with and not allowing the time pressure to overwhelm the teams as they work through this crunched-down pitch process. It ‘s going to take courage and collaboration. It will also be a great way for the PR industry to collectively give something back for a great cause in Unicef. Good luck!”
Enter at www.creativeshootout.com
Now Go Create founder Claire Bridges is considered to be a creative expert and is regularly asked to judge creative awards, following 20 years at the sharp end in PR and the only person in the UK PR industry to have studied to MA level in creativity and innovation. This year Claire is a judge at the PR Week Awards, worked at Cannes Lions as a creativity trainer on the new Masters of Creativity course and is a UK judge for the inaugural ICCO Awards launched this year. The ICCO awards bring together 31 PR trade bodies from all over the world to judge creative excellence in PR along with exceptional evaluation.
Claire is also speaking about creativity at the ICCO annual global conference in Milan this October – a key moment in the global PR industry to take stock and discuss key issues.