More D&AD Reflection

I should start this post with an apology, because lately I've been relentlessly spamming the social networks with news of mine and Olly's D&AD Student Award nomination for our Peace One Day project. I think one has to be a fairly shameless self-promoter when getting into this industry, but the downside is that those who know you well can get a bit sick of it all. So to those people, sorry.

I also feel sorry for a team from Sunderland, who had almost exactly the same idea as us - you can view it here - but didn't win a nomination (though they're going to the BBH Barn shortly, so their story has a happy ending).

I wanted to work out why our version of the idea won out - not to gloat, but to understand, so the success can be repeated. I think the answer is simply that we worked harder at ours. We tested our thinking and our strategy at every stage, and we pushed our ideas as far as they could go, asking advice at every turn.

As a result, you find the little differences. Our method for getting people to play football is probably more technically realistic, as we found out that simply switching to a sports simulation engine within Battlefield 3 would have been extraordinarily difficult to code. The person who told me this also suggested using Electronic Arts, as they produced major videogames in both war and football - a fact which led us to the "pEAce day" logo, a useful stroke of luck.

Our research also led us to develop a realistic user journey, that took into account likely scepticism on the part of gamers, and therefore harnessed in-game advertising opportunities and created incentives for them to participate. Throughout, we were determined that the idea would fit into peoples' lives and habits, rather than expect them to take a leap into the unknown.

And that's it, really. It turns out that hard work counts as much as a good idea. And on that bombshell, I'm going to bed.