GLOBAL – JULY 15, 2011 – Cannes Lions may be over but it is only the beginning of another awards year, an ideal time to get started on those submissions. T-Minus, launched this week, is designed to keep agencies from missing awards deadlines. The free service, created by RKCR/Y&R’s Steve Moss and Jo Finch in collaboration with B-Reel, helps keep track of 130 upcoming global awards deadlines. Through the website, www.t-minuscountdown.com, users can choose the shows and download a personalized calendar as a dynamic infographic screensaver, which tracks not just the awards entry date, but also the date on which work has to run in order to qualify for entry.
Damon Collins, creative director at RKCR/Y&R says: “For creatives the self-inflicted pressure to win awards is constant. And the stress of making sure your work has appeared by the various dates of each of the numerous awards competitions only adds to that pressure. No matter how brilliant your work is, if it’s not eligible for or entered into the competitions no one’s walking for anything.
“Jo and Steve always had a sheet of layout paper on their desk listing awards deadlines and they’d cross off the weeks as they went by. Having been caught out in the past they used these calendars to remind themselves when they needed to pester me, the account team or the client, to make sure a particular piece of work was approved, made or had run.
“We thought it would be great to create a digital version of those scraps of paper: a utility that anyone who had ever suffered that last minute panic of “Christ, it needs to have run by next week and it’s not even shot yet!” could benefit from.”
Mark Wheeler, art director at B-Reel adds: “As well as creating a practical tool for creatives we also wanted to make something that would look great aesthetically running as your screensaver every day. The result is a constantly updating colourscape, with individual award deadlines growing and becoming more agitated as units of time flow around them. Given how often you see a screensaver we felt it important to add as much variety as possible to this view, so opted to use physics-based animation throughout. Working like this makes for some cool but unexpected results – you have to be ready to experiment and see what happens!”
New services such as an archive of past winners, an awards newsfeed and social networking functionality are being planned, as well as options to monetize T-Minus.
