Propellernet Celebrates 2nd Place Win at The Creative Shootout 2025

What a night! We’re still buzzing from The Creative Shootout last week, where our incredible team—Abigail Bennetts, Raquel Pinto, Chloe Tickner, and I—secured 2nd place. With such tough competition throughout the night, I couldn’t be more proud of our team!

We had four hours after being given a brief to create an idea with real impact, and then just eight minutes to present it to a sold out audience at BAFTA. With the night focused on Epilepsy Action, our idea was built around the shocking statistic that 42% of hiring managers admit they wouldn’t hire someone with epilepsy.

We proposed we would deliver 417,780 CVs (the number of working-age people with epilepsy currently unemployed) outside of 10 Downing Street, to call for action from the government to make disability employment and pay-gap reporting mandatory – and get the public talking in the process.

With regional OOH billboards, celebrity support, social amplification showing #epilepsycanwork and proposed podcast partnerships, we feel we met the brief of shattering the stigma that unfortunately continues around epilepsy and are still buzzing from all the great feedback we received after taking the stage. 

But how do you develop an idea and turn it into an audience-ready presentation in just four hours?! While it’s such a uniquely nerve-wracking and rewarding concept, it’s not something you (thankfully) have to do in a standard work week -it does however teach you some important things about the essentials of working together as a creative team…

Outside of how good snacks are crucial to any hectic day, here’s some things that stand out from taking part for the last two years:

• Honesty: A must in just four hours but something most of us could get better at. It’s classic British nature to be overly polite and say there’s no worries when there really are worries, and it can feel a bit awkward to say you’re not feeling an idea when a colleague has just talked it through… but as long as you’re not just saying ‘I don’t like it’ and have a reason for it, this speeds things up so much, keeps everyone aligned and makes sure an idea or presentation doesn’t become over-inflated with thoughts that everyone agreed to because they were being too polite. Plus, honest feedback has helped me so much in my career – it’s a win-win.
• Be vulnerable: Tying in with the honesty thing, one of the biggest challenges of sharing what could be a great idea with the room, is sharing it in the first place. Again, the best ideas are different, at times a bit weird or even based on personal experience. Allowing yourself and others to feel like they can be vulnerable and not hold themselves back is a must for any team!
• Trust: So you need to trust in each other to be comfortable sharing thoughts and feedback, but you also need to trust each other to do the work. A lot of people can want to ‘hold on’ to every task but (especially in just four hours) the load should always be shared – along with a shared trust in each other that you can cover your bit and get it done as a team 
• Simplify: The best ideas are rooted in great insight, but the best ideas are also easy to explain. If you find yourself having to describe something for ages before getting to the crux of the idea, it probably ain’t it. With just 8 minutes to pitch an idea in the Creative Shootout, it teaches you to cut the fluff and focus on what matters – great advice for any presentation really.
• Rehearse: No one wants to choke on stage at BAFTA, and the best way to avoid that is by rehearsing. Yes it takes time, yes it can feel lame saying the same joke over and over but it helps with so much – nerves, the timing of the person with the clicker, spotting any sections that trip you up etc etc…
• Have fun: Most importantly though – and something I always try to tell myself – is to just have fun. Thankfully, our jobs aren’t a life and death situation and the post-presentation buzz is genuinely worth all the fear and thoughts of ‘why did I agree to do this?! I could just be eating crisps at home right now’. Enjoy it!