2010 Winners & Shortlists

Creative Execution

Instead of selling the university students cars, we told them a story. We created the first ever manga comic series in Saudi Arabia. The stories were centered around H&O experiencing Saudi Arabia for the first time. The manga comics were published across all the key university magazines featuring the adventures of H&O in the Middle East. Cruze was revealed within the comic, and the features were showcased within the context. We also invited the students to be part of the comic. By becoming fans of H&O on Facebook, they had the chance to star in the manga comics themselves.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

Chevrolet launched their new compact car, the Cruze, with two bumbling Japanese spies called Hiroshi & Osamu (H&O). The car was aimed at first time car buyers in Saudi Arabia, of which university students were a significant number. Japanese comics/series have a huge heritage in our region; from Sasuki to Pokémon, the whole population was raised watching these characters. Youngsters would grow up and continue reading the mangas, tune in to online sites and read their favorite comics; A site like www.mexat.com, an Arabic subtitled manga attracts over 1.3 million unique users per month.