2012 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

Johnnie Walker decided to continue the success of last year’s campaign by featuring Nadine Labaki, a multi award-winning Lebanese director whose successful movies capture the hearts of the Lebanese audience due to their realism, the taboo topics explored, and authentic portrayal of characters. Nadine Labaki’s story is especially influential since Nadine is the very first woman ever to represent the Johnnie Walker brand as an aspirational role model, creating a huge impact for the brand. As such, the identity of Nadine became the best-kept secret in the industry and was not revealed until the day of the campaign’s launch. The Keep Walking Lebanon cause was given a lot of mileage, not only because of Nadine’s success in the local film industry, but also because her messages resound so well with our core audience that we gave them a forum for discussion online.

Success of the Campaign

On the day of launch, right after Nadine Labaki was announced as the new talent and before she was even done with her speech, Beirut Night Life – a popular Lebanese online portal – had posted the news online, which generated immense buzz. All told, the campaign received free PR worth more than $470,000 and free media worth over $1,840,000. The percentage of female interaction with the brand doubled to 49% this year versus just 24% last year. In less than 3 months, the Johnnie Walker Lebanon Facebook page reached 1,629,575 people in a country with a Facebook population of just over 1.4 million, giving our message and our campaign significant online traction. In terms of growth, market share by volume for the Johnnie Walker brand grew from an already dominant 60.7% to an impressive 64.5% in a declining market.

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

Nadine Labaki was announced as the new face of Johnnie Walker during a lavish launch event with VIPs, key media influencers and bloggers, during which the campaign TVC was revealed. The hype drove the online media to instantly create buzz around the identity of our role model that same night. Online, a microsite ran 3 film podcasts featuring inspiring stories from Nadine’s career, allowing people to engage in conversation on how they “Keep Lebanon Walking”, while the Johnnie Walker Lebanon Facebook page mirrored the interactions on the microsite. Our first TVC illustrated Nadine’s success as an inspiration for individual progress, leveraged on local TV stations and regionally on CNN. Over the New Year, the second TVC rallied hearts and minds with a message of collective progress, an especially relevant idea during the New Year period. The campaign also ran in Print and Outdoor and garnered massive PR and media interest.