Case Study

The Orwell Foundation: The Orwell Prizes

In George Orwell’s essay ‘Why I Write’, he declared what he most wanted to do was “make political writing into an art”. Between February and July 2020, we worked with the charity set up in his name, the Orwell Foundation, creating a range of content to showcase long and shortlisted entries in the Orwell Prizes.

Objectives

  • Raise the profile of The Orwell Foundation and The Orwell Prizes.
  • To create content to announce the longlists, shortlists and winners of each prize category.
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video views on Twitter
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coverage
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social media films produced over two years
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paperback books published with Orwell Prize stickers on.

Content from the Campaign

Taking place over the course of lockdown, our original plans of filming the judges at Tate Modern went askew. Rather than another Zoom or FaceTime film, we decided to centre the content around words. Utilising fonts, textures, voiceovers and sound FX, we created a series of vibrant typographical-style films to announce nominees and winners for the prize's four categories. We:
  • Created over 40 typographical films to announce the prize categories, longlists, shortlists and winners of each of the Orwell Prizes, gaining over 440K organic video views on Twitter alone.
  • Secured a feature with The Times to announce the prize shortlists, reaching a circulation of 4.2 million.
  • Created a prize stickers for the winners’ books, now seen on bookshop shelves.
  • Worked alongside The Orwell Foundation to develop Orwell Prize content two years in a row. 
  • Further developed the The Orwell Prize’s visual identity, generating an eye-catching style and feel across all content. 
  • Moved on to also generate content for the Orwell Youth Prize campaign.