2012 Winners & Shortlists

Brief Explanation

The biggest challenge was doing something creative enough to get people's attention. As Oman's biggest advertising agency, it wasn't enough to say we are creative, it was something we actually had to do. The second challenge was working with the gate-fold format. In previous years, companies had simply run different full-page ads on each panel that had no relationship to each other. Finally, our objective was to encourage readers that we could get their brand to the top of the "Best Brands" lists.

The Brief

Every year Business Today magazine conducts a brand survey, and publish the results of the "Best Brands" in an special insert. All of Oman's top business people and marketing people pay specific attention to this issue. Our brief was to 'own' this insert, as not only are some of our current clients featured inside, but many prospective clients are too.

How the final design was conceived

We decided to use the unique format as the base for our idea, and decided to treat it as the cover of a book. The outside was designed to replicate something you might find in the 'business section' of a bookstore, and talked specifically about "getting brands to the top". the back cover continued the pastiche, with fictional quotes, prices and a QR Code that linked to the agencies website. Inside we revealed the punchline - you don't need a book, all you need is the right agency.

Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market

This single insert generated five new business leads, two of which are now current clients. As a side note, the design was perhaps too realistic for some of Business Today's readers, as our Managing Director received several calls from people wanting to know where they could buy the book...