2011 Winners & Shortlists

Results and Effectiveness

This was one of the most successful, digital campaigns for MSN – especially considering that we had only used MSN Egypt’s own digital media space to advertise their products. The Ana Masri pack was downloaded 119,296 times – not just by Egyptians but Arabs across the region who’ve grown up on Egyptian culture. Increased visits to MSN Egypt through our campaign led to higher downloads for other Microsoft products, just what our client was looking for. Internet Explorer was downloaded 13,894 times, Bing was set as homepage 59,682 times and Windows Live Essentials was downloaded 24,617 times.

Creative Execution

We used just one unique digital medium to draw our audience to the Microsoft brand. 10 Egyptian emoticons and avatars were created for MSN Messenger – they looked, talked and behaved just like local Egyptians of today. The people of Egypt could now express themselves through over-emotive gestures, digitally. This pack of 10 emoticons was named ‘Ana Masri’ or ‘I Am Egyptian’ to further reinforce the unity that Egyptians have amongst each other despite their diversity. We used Microsoft’s in-house database and digital space to advertise them through e-mails and web banners placed on MSN Egypt. This became our entry point – it was one way of getting our audience to MSN Egypt, and promoting the use of other Microsoft products.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

Microsoft wanted to improve its consumer base in Egypt across all its products – from MSN Egypt to Internet Explorer 8, Bing and Windows Live Essentials. They wanted to make their digital offerings more relatable to the Egyptian people in general. To outsiders, Egypt is full of stereotypes like pyramids and pharaohs. But modern day Egyptian people are dramatic and colourful – uniquely different from other Arab cultures. They didn’t relate with Microsoft products as they lacked the local touch a brand should have. Our insight was to reach out to Egyptians first through their language. MSN chat is the space we choose to initiate this relationship. Since MSN chat in Egypt is the widely used channel amongst all the other Microsoft products, it make perfect sense to get them where they already were and get the Microsoft brand to start speaking to them like an Egyptian would.