Rachel Farrow piece

What were some of the highlights from the awards for you personally?

It's my 7th Digital Awards and I felt this one was another great success. The entries were up 30% and from 52 separate companies, we had a really high quality meeting in the afternoon which elevated the whole event to being educational as well as celebrating excellence and the evaluation survey results were really good (just in) and some of the highlights are below:

> 85% of participants said they are VERY (53%) or QUITE (35%) likely to attend the event next year

Venue: 90% gave The Brewery a Good (45%) or Excellent (45%) rating

Value: Over 90% of the survey participants said they benefited from Having fun/being entertained and over 80% said they benefited from Networking opportunities; over half said they benefitted from Educational value / opportunity to learn

Format - there remains an overwhelming preference for Suits and Glamour compared to Black tie or Business Casual.

What were some of the trends exhibited at the show which were of particular interest?

There were many more true Multichannel entries this year and a clearer use of social media channels to help get messages out / generate noise. There was also a move away from disease portals and very large / comprehensive educational sites. So many of these exist already run by professional bodies and charities. It's hard to compete and to keep them up to date.

The largest numbers of entries were yet again in the Film and Animation categories, Congress and Meetings and Innovation. In the Animation category people are using the whole spectrum of animation styles. - from kinetic typography where text is brought alive by sound effects, to 2 D characters, 3D modes of action and high quality CGI from agencies that are more used to working on car adverts. It's not all about anatomical correctness, trying to make animation as “true to the anatomy as possible”. It was just as much about giving blood cells personalities and humour to get across key messages. But the winner was high end, using the most expensive CGI graphics. It really blew the audience away - had the Wow factor.

There were many great films. It's still about producing an impactful memorable piece of live action, whether featuring real patients, HCPs or actors. Production values were high. The winner was Sniffers by Langland which used humour and had great multichannel execution, using social media to create noise. But many others used humour, or generated emotion/ made people feel something.

Games - the trend here was similar - it's not about producing flashy expensive games - no one can compete with the gaming market. It's about Multichannel campaigns that will have a game as part of it, which is used to engage the audience and give messages. Eg the winner Restoration game. Very simple - a sliding puzzle using the delegate's own face as the image. Simple engaging quiz - like the HPV quiz for girls in shopping centres. The game itself was just a 5 question quiz - what sort of girl are you? But it was the setting/context, and the shared fun in doing this in a shopping centre with your friends.