Editorial from James Page from RAW London about their win at the previous Outvertising Awards.
The Outvertising Awards were an incredible experience for our agency (Raw London) to champion an LGBTQ+ story. Since entering and winning the last awards - we donated the prize of £165,000 worth of media spend to the trans youth charity Mermaids, which backed a bespoke film we made for them.
The awards were appealing as they were super easy to enter and allowed us to have complete free-reign with the creative. They also steered us to have discussions around how we can best represent the LGBTQ+ community within the content we create outside of this competition. We attended the last event at Google’s headquarters with around 5 (actually, maybe 10) cocktails consumed to calm our nerves before the judges revealed the outcome. The evening was an incredible experience, and we’re super excited to see the incredible work showcased at this year’s virtual event on the 17th.
Our film ETHAN launched in September 2019 and has since been watched millions of times online. Gay Times also featured a double spread in their 500th magazine issue and shared the film across their social platforms. The two-minute film uses an arcade game to visualise Ethan’s journey; with bullies and the struggles of coming out as trans becoming antagonists and hurdles to overcome within the game. As a fan of video games - it was super exciting to create a virtual realm of our own!
With the level of exposure that came with the media prize from Google and Gay Times, we ensured that the narrative was as true to a trans experience as possible. We worked closely with Ethan to develop his story into a moving script that accurately reflected his experience.
Transgender narratives are often overlooked or under fire in the media, so we wanted to leverage our prize to give a transgender individual a platform. Sadly 2020 has continued with this fire, so having the Outvertising Awards as a platform and incentive to create these stories is not just a fantastic opportunity for an agency, but also an incredibly important one for the wider narrative around queer representation and public opinion.
We’ll be there watching the two-hour event, which includes talks & panels as well as the announcement of the winners. You can still sign up - just make sure you get your cocktail making perfected beforehand to calm any nerves!
