2012 Winners & Shortlists

Results and Effectiveness

In a country with a total of 4.5 million people, over 600,000 witnessed this stunt. Though people couldn’t necessarily call into the programs, they did however pick up their phones to dial the BPG call center and report spotted counterfeit products. In a month’s time, the Call Center witnessed an 850% increase in the number of callers. Lebanon may not be free of fake products, but with this level of awareness, counterfeit can no longer go unnoticed.

Creative Execution

As part of a full-fledged integrated campaign, we wanted to use International Counterfeit Day to get people to recognize the problem by exaggerating it. To reach the country’s biggest TV viewership, we attacked the highest rated TV show ever, during prime time TV. Marcel Ghanem, the iconic host of the most watched socio-political TV program on the nation’s leading station willingly fell victim to our anti-counterfeit campaign. Our fake host opened his show and was in fact the agency's managing director. A representative from BPG was invited on the show to talk about the dangers of counterfeit.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

After 15 years of Lebanese civil war and 20 years of instability, resulting in poorly controlled borders, it’s no surprise that counterfeit products are so widespread here. Despite strict laws against it, counterfeit is still part of the culture - everywhere to be seen; yet barely noticed. Almost any brand has a fake equivalent in stores. To substitute for an inefficient consumer protection office, Brand Protection Group (BPG) was born, a coalition of major corporations and distributers working to fight counterfeit. Without pointing out actual brands being imitated, we were asked to create an awareness campaign on counterfeit and promote the call center. Using the fact that in Arabic the words Imitation / counterfeit/ and fake all mean the same thing, our idea stemmed from our reality: "the closest things to you can be fake".