Communications agency Red Consultancy was crowned the winner of The Creative Shootout 2023 in aid of FoodCycle in London last night.
The live final show saw nine finalist agency teams of four compete against each other to win £10,000 and charity FoodCycle as a client.
Each of the teams – selected in 2022 – had just eight minutes to pitch back ideas that they had developed earlier in the day to the live audience and high profile judging panel.
The original brief was given to the finalists at lunchtime, giving the agencies just four hours to come up with a campaign that will increase awareness and understanding of what FoodCycle do. The competition aims to help the charity – that feeds the hungry and provides company and warmth to the lonely – establish 100 project locations in the UK by 2025.
Backed by a £50,000 media inventory prize from The Guardian and £25,000 from Channel 4, Red Consultancy will now see their idea come to life. The agency will also have an audio package from podcast company Acast and a research programme from OnePoll, to further promote the campaign.
The Red Consultancy team based their pitch on highlighting the stigmas around sharing food in a campaign titled ‘Ummm into Yum’. Second place Raw LDN, dreamt up an idea that ‘contextualised the perfect volunteer’, while third place agency, Mischief, pitched a campaign idea called ‘The Lonely Caterpillar’, which focused on one of FoodCycle’s main objectives – tackling loneliness.
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“The Creative Shootout is the most raw and real creative awards show for charity in the UK. And in our comeback year after Covid, we were single minded on ideas that would create real and lasting change for FoodCycle. Red nailed it and we’re excited to see how they take it on from here,” Creative Shootout founder Johnny Pitt said.
The judging panel included the likes of We Are Social executive creative director Simon Richings, Cook and TV presenter Chris Bavin, and The Guardian head of global brand marketing Joel Midgley.
FoodCycle CEO Mary McGrath added: “Demand for our services is growing faster than ever, so we urgently need better awareness and understanding of who we are and what we do, to support us as we grow. All of tonight’s finalists blew us away, but Red demonstrated perfectly what we were after. We can’t wait to work together this year.”
