It’s been a long time coming, but we’ve finally done it. The first event was a resounding success – 30 students, 4 briefs, 7 hours and a whirlwind of creativity later we’re still buzzing!

Besides the complete logistical cock up getting to Bournemouth (train tickets not valid, a 6 mile bike ride across town and back at 6am, finally resorting to a rush hour dash in Dan’s car) we arrived with 15 minutes to spare, wolfed down a coffee/croissant breakfast and got to work. There was an incredible amount to cram into the day so we started as we meant to go on, talking 19 to the dozen at rows of sleepy students unsure what to expect from two caffeine fueled meejah tarts from the city. Not to mention the video camera in their faces, handled excellently by Holly Budge of Hip Joint Films. The video will be up shortly…

After the first session we all did an introduction session to get the energy levels up, which was followed by the open brainstorm to develop 4 briefs the teams would be working from for the rest of the day. Having whittled the list of clients and platforms down to four apiece we ended up with:

Anne Summers – Wii remote installation
Guinness – Rich media flash site
Roman Catholic Church – Alternate Reality Game
Apple – Video virals

Before lunch each team had to submit a pitch document that we then marked while they started the production of the prototype. During production we dropped in on the temporary agency headquarters to drop some spanners in the works, offer feedback and make sure each team was on track.

The final showdown was a bizarre, hilarious, poignant orgy of ideas, confidence, mishaps and quick thinking. Each team had 5 minutes to set up, 10 to present and 5 more to field our most awkward questions. Despite a thorough grilling and some very different presentations there was little separating the agencies when it came to delivering the final verdict. We looked at:

The pitch document (presentation, content, late delivery etc)
The imagination of the proposed idea
The relevance of the idea according to the client / brief
The quality of the blogs posted throughout the day
The style of the final presentation
The assets / prototypes used in the final presentation

The criteria to determine the winning team was overly complex and will be refined for next time. In the end it came down to a 1 point margin and Super Beard, proposing a viral video campaign for Apple, pipped the other 3 to the post. Their presentation was slick, the idea was simple, showing great potential for future campaigns. They were rewarded with 2 bottles of champagne, promptly sprayed across the lecture theatre and after a few vox pops for the video, we headed to the bar ourselves, pleased as punch that the day had been such a success. We can’t wait to get cracking with the next one – Plymouth perhaps?

Tags: Industry Day

This entry was posted on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 8:36 am and is filed under Cool stuff, Thought Den. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.