2010 Winners & Shortlists

The Brief

To engage with the local audience in the Middle East, MSN had pursued many different activities. One of them was establishing the local version of its website, MSN Arabia. However, most people in the region still preferred other sites and services such as Maktoob, Google and Yahoo for local content. Awareness about MSN was low in general. Our challenge was to further localize MSN and start building a relationship with its audience, in the age group of 15-35.

Creative Execution

People are more comfortable expressing themselves in their own language and style rather than a foreign one. The fact that our audience now had a localized form of expression would make them identify with MSN much more. This is exactly what our emoticons achieved. What’s more, we made sure that the timing of release coincided with Ramadan & Eid – the biggest holiday season of the year in the region, and the one time everyone makes it a point to call or connect with each other.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

The most widely used service from MSN Arabia was Messenger. We decided to use this as our entry point. What our audience didn’t have was a familiar means of expression. Besides language, they were using universal smileys, known as emoticons. So we decided to localize all this. Not only did people have a choice of local language, but for the first time ever, we also created a set of 10 free emoticons with local expressions. Richly animated, these icons used popular greetings that people across the Middle East region could easily identify with.

Results

Launched in English, Arabic and French through email shots and strategically placed web banners in MSN chat windows, the campaign spread virally. First day of release saw 1500 hits on the website. Within two months out of the 628,070 visits, 241,000 actually downloaded and used the emoticons. We engaged a huge mass of people who never looked at MSN as theirs. The numbers are growing every day. We are now in the process of creating country-specific emotions as the first round was so successful. MSN has now finally come to Arabia!