2011 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

After launching The Economist in the Middle East with the traditional white and red campaign, we believed the region was ready for something new - and our client agreed. We wanted our new brand campaign to be cerebral, but this time with a conceptual visual element. So we picked important global debates and developed a campaign of Conversations that offered opposing opinions on the same important issues. All designed to encourage conversations.

Success of the Campaign

So has this new integrated brand campaign been well received? Yes, even better than we’d hoped. Thousands of people have visited the Facebook page and the numbers are still climbing. The campaign has been very favourably received in the market, on air, on blogs and is being widely shared across social media sites. Real, meaningful conversations are taking place - some undoubtedly more heated than others. And as the campaign rolls out across the region, the numbers are continuing to rise, delivering perfectly on our strategy by allowing people to truly 'join the global conversation'.

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

We rolled the campaign out across the UAE in a range of media. First we built an Economist Middle East Facebook page with daily feeds of leading articles from the magazine. Then we launched the campaign in high profile magazines and on a range of outdoor sites across Dubai that encouraged people to go to the Facebook page and truly 'join the global conversation'. At the same time, we rolled out a series of animated web banners that were placed on selected sites to also drive people to the Facebook site. We then added a direct marketing element by distributing Conversation Coasters to coffee shops and restaurants in Dubai - the ideal venues to get conversations going.