Rising Stars Pitch Competition
Role: Art direction and creative strategy
The starting point
Tech Nation was launching a new competition with a nationwide audience that would compete with the likes of Pitch at the Palace and Virgin Voom. The programme team wanted the focus of the competition marketing to be around representing a variety of people in UK tech, as previous competitions had been criticised for the lack of diversity of the winners.
We felt like we could definitely do something about this in the advertising, so:
We removed language that felt excessively gladiatorial and masculine and focused on the idea of stepping up and being the next big thing
We ensured a mix of real tech founders from a variety of different backgrounds, with very different companies
We tied each section/video to local landmarks and well known areas to ensure that a national focus didn’t just feel like lip service
As well as main hero video which was used on social media and played at events to promote the competition, we also created a selection of shorts with regionally targeted messaging.
Posters and flyers were also created and distributed to tech-focused co-working spaces across the country.
The programme team designed the competition so that it could be entered from anywhere with a short video pitch. However, we didn’t want people to lose confidence so we also created a video guide to help people understand what makes a good pitch.
The final product
Around 20% of entries for the competition came from the advertising campaign - some who saw it even went on to win! When asked why he chose to enter, Leo, pictured below in the grey blazer, said “I saw a cool video online and thought, why not?”
The programme easily conquered its diversity targets, with a selection of winners that truly represent the different types of people running innovative startup companies in UK tech.
