4 hours… it’s a trip to Manchester from London. It’s a good time to run a marathon in. You could even catch up on a whole week’s worth of The Traitors.

It’s also how long the team at Mischief (Lewis Durkin, Cian Hearns, Anna Ouseley-Giraldo and myself) had to respond to a brief from Carers UK for The Creative Shootout 2024. Not long!

So what is Creative Shootout?

In their own words, The Creative Shootout is the UK’s leading done in a day creative-for-good awards, that tests the mettle of the UK’s best creative agencies on a real brief from a Charity of the Year.

In our words, it’s an exciting day to completely immerse yourself into a brief for four hours, before (terrifyingly) presenting in front of a live audience at BAFTA.

This year’s selected Charity was Carers UK, whose mission it is to make life better for the UK’s 5.7 million unpaid carers.

But before even thinking about getting to BAFTA, we had to submit a 60 second video which showed Carers UK why we think we should be on that stage.

For our entry, we created ‘The Interview’. Being an unpaid carer is the one job that you don’t apply for, and even if you could, you wouldn’t want to. Based on this we created an eery first-person style interview, with the viewer unsure what is happening until the powerful final credit.

And from this, we made it through to the Live Final Show alongside seven other talented agencies!

The Live Final

At around midday, we received a brief from the brilliant Helen Walker, Chief Executive at Carers UK.

It currently takes on average two years for someone to recognise themselves as a ‘carer’ – meaning they’re not getting access to the support that is available whether that be benefits, mental health, employment or financial. Our job was to come up with a campaign which halves this time. It’s also worth mentioning that we were also told this isn’t a pitch presentation and to bring theatre.

When it comes to our approach, as much as we wanted to encourage people to spot the signs within themselves, we think the best results occur when those closest to us drive the realisations. So that’s how we framed this conversation.

How do we help millions across the country see that their closest friend, their parent of their neighbour has the traits of a carer? We proposed working with the best in the business. Those who have ample experience in spotting the subtle – and not so subtle – changes in habits and behaviours in those around them.

Enter Claudia Winkleman of course. (Or the best we could do in four hours, which was me in a wig and cape…)

Our campaign was The Carers, a spin on the nation’s love for the Traitors, to get the everybody looking closely at those closest to them to uncloak the unpaid carers amongst us.

With an emotive piece of content in the guise of The Traitors roundtable, Claudia (the real one!) would lead an investigation into the cloaked carers around the table, highlighting that they are all around us. With real-life round table pop ups in the UK to educate people on what to look for, and a solid £250,000 media package across broadcast and OOH, the whole nation would be behind the drive to get unpaid carers the support they need.

The whole process and presentation was great fun. Whilst we didn’t get top three, we were proud to have made it to the final. We even got a round of applause mid-way through which felt like a win. Plus I took the wig and cape home.

Well done to all of the other teams that took part. It’s exciting to see what’s possible in four hours. Hopefully we see you again next year to bring more Mischief!