When COVID-19 forced the cancellation of D&AD’s in-person awards ceremony, they turned to us at Facebook’s Creative Shop to help move the whole ceremony and surrounding festival online.
Led by Rich Kivell and working with Studio Dumbar, I created a series of virtual Pencil awards via AR for Instagram. With different designs for the main awards and New Blood series, both required the recipient to record a selfie story in order to find out the pencil colour they’d won.
This meant recipient reactions were captured right at the critical moment, while also moving them through the sharing funnel: by then posting their content to IG they helped collectively lift the profile of the event.
A hidden easter egg featured a world effect on the back camera, enabling recipients to place a virtual award wherever they like.
The results are a charming and playful series of reveals - awards showing up in the everyday, at-home lockdown lives of the industry’s leading lights.
Press:
“As our audience is largely on Instagram, a filter for Instagram Stories was the optimum solution. Winners had their own unique ‘Pencil moment’ that they could immediately share, without having to leave their living room.”