2010 Winners & Shortlists

Results and Effectiveness

In four weeks 980 handbags were created by local Arab women. Each participant registered their personal details for further re-contact by SilkEpil. Five hundred of those entrants shared the campaign with a friend. 20,300 Unique users which translates into an impressive 10% conversion rate. All of this led to a sales index of 119, volume share of 128 over the previous half and according to SilkEpil’s Brand Manager, “a showcase of how digital is opening up new ways to keep our market leading brand relevant. We are seeing the business results developing thanks to this.”

Creative Execution

The solution was a design competition for the one thing local women can show over the abaya – handbags. Mothers & daughters were asked to upload a handbag illustration which they either designed together from scratch or personalized through available templates onto a SilkEpil microsite. Online was identified as the best medium because we were looking at targeting young girls in their “Me time” where personal messages, such as hair removal, are not embarrassing. Maktoob (largest portal in the Arab world with over 8.5 million women) was chosen to host the micrsosite and standard banners ran in parallel, to drive traffic to the competition. The entries were short listed and the final winning design was brought to life by Poupee Couture’s Roula Ghalayini, a local designer renowned for pushing creative boundaries within the context of being an Arab woman

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

Saudi society dictates women must cover themselves in public (head to toe) by wearing a black Abaya. What’s interesting is that despite the fact nobody ever sees them, Saudi women often wear designer shoes and expensive jeans under their Abaya. Why would they do that? Our insight tells us that – Although Saudi Women can’t publically display their taste in fashion they still want to feel like women - and part of that involves having smooth legs. So our challenge was to promote a product whose core benefit – ‘smooth legs’ – can’t be shown in any of its marketing. Therefore, if we couldn’t go ‘under the Abaya’ we had to go ‘over the Abaya’ and create an opportunity that strongly linked SilkEpil to Saudi females. The target audience was two-fold: teenage girls, who are worried about removing unwanted hair for the first time, and mothers, who are looking for maximum comfort for their daughters. In light of the creative challenge and dual-targets, we had to find common ground between the two – fashion