Things are looking up for RIW

The ‘Things are Looking Up’ campaign revolved around a photographic competition with architects asked to take a picture, either on their smartphone or camera, that reflected a creative theme of ‘things are looking up’ and could be interpreted literally or emotionally.

Using the innovative Iconosquare platform to host the competition and streamed through the competition page on RIW’s website, entrants were asked to take a picture and to post the image on either Instagram or twitter using the hashtag #thingsarelookingup and @mentioning the @TALU_RIW Instagram and/or Twitter account. Dedicated Instagram and Twitter accounts were set up for the competition to enable us to use them as a vehicle for entries but also to ensure we could use these platforms for targeted advertising.

To ensure we reached the younger architect, adverts were set up to target the top architectural colleges and universities in the UK, and targeting specific job titles such as ‘architectural student’.

To support the campaign, we identified Emmanuel Cole, the popular architectural photographer and ‘the original iPhone photographer’, commissioning him to take five shots to post through his own Instagram account, and for RIW to post throughout the campaign on their social feeds.

The competition was open for 2 months and received 226 entries with representation from a number of the AJ top 100 practices (TP Bennett, Allies and Morrison, HTA, HOK, Foster & Partners, Ryder, Donald Insall Architects, Purcell, Norr, amongst others). Furthermore, and key given our focus on young architects, entries were received from students from the UK’s leading architectural colleges and universities including Bath University, Dundee University and Manchester School of Architecture.