Each year BAFTA runs the BAFTA Young Game Designers competition for 11 to 18 year olds, which aims to inspire the UK’s games creators of the future. The competition gives young people the opportunity to design or make their own game. BAFTA works closely with the games industry and with teachers, and others involved in education

Pedroza Communications was selected by BAFTA to provide PR support to help raise awareness of BAFTA Young Game Designers (YGD) to young people, teachers, and parents. We worked closely with the YGD team to create a campaign that would maximise exposure and help to engage with the target audience. There were three main pushes to the competition: the competition launch; announcement of the finalists; and the red carpet winners’ ceremony held at BAFTA HQ, 195 Piccadilly, London.

Our initial focus was to raise awareness with teachers through coverage in the education sector media and with support from education bloggers. This included Schools Week, Education Today and SecEd, and bloggers like Teacher Toolkit and Heads’ Office who all carried stories about YGD and the free resources teachers could use to encourage their students to enter the competition. We also got some great national attention from First News, The Week Junior and BBC Asian Network.

We then rolled up our sleeves to spread the word about the 60 BAFTA YGD finalists located across the UK. Many of these were teams of young people who were part of the 40 entries that made the list of finalists. We talked to journalists wherever there was a BAFTA finalist, from Aberdeen to Caerphilly to Wimbledon, and secured widespread coverage in regional and local media including radio and TV coverage.

We then had the amazing task of sharing the announcement of the 2018 YGD winners with the media. You can check them out here on the YGD website. They are truly inspiring and we secured coverage in local and regional media as well as further pick up in First News.

Throughout the campaign, social media was really important and we worked closely with a number of influencers including teen influencer Amazing Arabella and tech blogger and author Emma Gannon who shared news and content about YGD on their own channels.

Overall, the campaign secured 61 pieces of coverage and a reach of 4.9m from national radio and print, regional TV, radio and print, and education sector media.

“Pedroza Comms helped us to promote the BAFTA Young Game Designers initiative to teachers and the wider public. We’ve been very pleased with the coverage they’ve secured in education sector media, regional press, and broadcast media. They’ve also helped us to build new relationships with some social media influencers which has helped us to engage young people directly. We’ve enjoyed working with this small, specialist agency.” – Niyi Akeju, PR & Learning Campaigns Manager, BAFTA

Photo credit: BAFTA/Jamie Simonds’