2012 Winners & Shortlists

Results and Effectiveness

Close to 500,000 people read the front-page exposé uncovering our fake logo experiment and the message behind it. Quickly becoming the talk of the town, it triggered additional free media coverage in other popular publications, TV shows and blogs as well. 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. To reach the biggest newspaper readership in the country, we used the front page as a demonstration to prove how widespread counterfeit is. For the first time in the history of the regional press, newspapers were willing to put their readers to the test by faking their front-page logo. The day before March 15th, as part of this joint experiment, the highest nationally circulated newspaper asked its readers to spot the difference and report it by calling the call center. However, as expected, very few people noticed. So the next day on International Counterfeit Day, the experiment’s purpose was revealed: "You need to look harder, the closest things to you can be fake."

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 distributors 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".