What two years of virtual quizzes can teach you about content
Remember virtual quizzes? Two years on from the start of the pandemic, we’re reflecting on how testing our skills – whether through scavenger hunts or unconventional movie quizzes – has helped engage our love of storytelling
At Speak, we’re not ones to do anything by halves – so perhaps it’s not surprising that long after most people have abandoned virtual quizzes, we’re still taking to Microsoft Teams at the end of each week to put our knowledge to the test.
Back in our pre-pandemic studio in East London, 5pm on a Friday was a time to down tools, have a chat and grab a beer – or whatever we could scrounge from the back of the fridge. When lockdown hit, keeping up this weekly tradition helped us maintain a sense of togetherness while working remotely.
So, since then, we’ve tasked one or two team members with organising the week’s entertainment, chosen with the help of a spinning Wheel of Names (trust me, the virtual confetti only adds salt to the wound of being randomly selected).
The quizzes have ranged from scavenger hunts encouraging our picture desk to sprint off in search of their most stylish hats, to unconventional movie quizzes interrogating our pop culture knowledge. After all, nothing says ‘it’s the weekend’ like an image of a tiny building-block monster bursting out of a Lego John Hurt, and everyone shouting “Alien!” at their screens.
But obviously everything we do comes back to content creation. Even the most absurd of briefs finds a way of engaging our love of storytelling – and offers the satisfaction of finding the right medium for every message.
The Speak team’s festive quiz.
Top marks
So, what have two years of creating zoom quizzes reaffirmed about our craft?
1. It’s all about user experience
Dodgy formatting, unclear questions or faltering Wi-Fi won’t cut it if you’re trying to meet the Speak team’s (extremely) demanding standards. Make sure you’ve got eagle-eyed fact checkers at home, ready to test out your approach in advance.
2. Getting a balanced content diet
Music notes, detailed PowerPoints, picture rounds, interactive apps, puzzles – we’ve turned a range of mediums into fully-fledged quizzes. Varying your format and approach from week to week helps any consistent content output stay engaging.
3. Embrace the unexpected
A broad range of topics (from football to superheroes to festive facts, and everything in between) have kept us in suspense – and even revealed a few surprising subject-specialisms among Speaksters.
And inspiration can come from unlikely places. My personal quiz highlight was going entirely against brief and putting together a ‘boring quiz’. There’s nothing quite like seeing the look on your colleagues’ faces when you ask them to differentiate between shades of beige, identify hold music or choose the most downloaded stock photo.
‘Phone a friend’
We’re not sure that learning about content is absolutely the only reason anyone joins drinks on a Friday evening. But as we get ready for the next weekly set of questions (to be assembled by George, which means we’re in for a challenge) it’s good to know that even the most casual of conversations at Speak can somehow feed into idea generation, insights on audience, and planning and processes.
Of course, you’re welcome to get in touch if you’re looking for an agency that can cater to all your quiz-curating needs…