2011 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

STC, a leader in bringing the world of football closer to its Saudi fans, signed an unprecedented deal with Real Madrid to bring instant and exclusive content and updates on club news to STC customers. Our challenge was to raise awareness and incentivise subscription. We knew that we would be talking to hardcore fans that coveted as much information as possible, and believed that if they had enough information they would be good enough to coach themselves. Our creative platform thus played on the idea that the service brings you so much inside information on Real Madrid, you feel you could coach them yourself.

Success of the Campaign

Not only was our campaign and our hero, Saud the coach, the talk of the town in newspapers and on blogs, but fans were intrigued to see a Saudi boy interacting, like old buddies, with their idols or being respected as a coach. It created a unique bond that was absent before. Fans started to feel that now, not only did they know their team, but that maybe their team knew a little about them too. Real Madrid service subscribers increased by 491% between November 2009 and March 2010, and customers got the chance to experience the trip of a lifetime.

Describe how the campaign/entry was launched and executed across each channel in the order of implementation.

We created a character named 'Saud the Hero', a typical Saudi boy, and the way he dressed and spoke was most familiar to our target audience. Our campaign focused on Saud as the new Saudi coach of the team. We featured him in all the typical coach roles and, because we wanted to capture the essence of the sport, we launched the campaign mimicking the way football news is revealed. We started with press releases to generate buzz amongst fans, followed by a teaser campaign on TV, radio, print, outdoor and social media which mimicked the sports news format. Finally we released our revealer and capitalised on the excitement. This was done in conjunction with a monthly prize draw for subscribers, to win one of 50 all-expenses-paid trips to Real Madrid. We filmed the trips to bring the once-in-a-lifetime experience that STC was providing to life.