2012 Winners & Shortlists

Results and Effectiveness

On the day of launch, before Nadine was even done with her speech, Beirut Night Life had posted the news online. 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% 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 around 1.4 million, giving our campaign significant traction. 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.

Creative Execution

Because we had a phenomenally inspiring achiever as our new role model and how revolutionary a step this was for Johnnie Walker, we decided to keep the identity of Nadine a secret from the very beginning in order to build enormous hype. On December 16, VIPs and key media were invited to an exquisite dinner complete with live entertainment and custom-made whisky cocktails, where the identity of the new role model was revealed. Twitteraties at the event instantly broke the news online, creating massive buzz that quickly spread across the country. That same night, our microsite went live with the TVC and podcasts, and the next day we heavily seeded the campaign among top bloggers and media. A call to action with a website address on all channels directed viewers to the microsite, where they could interact with the different campaign elements and share how they would “Keep Lebanon Walking.”

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

In a country where the Lebanese youth continues to emigrate looking for bigger opportunities, we launched a National Cause, “Keep Walking Lebanon,” that would be represented by key Lebanese talent with an inspiring story of overcoming the odds and achieving profound success. The face of the campaign is Nadine Labaki, a multi award-winning Lebanese director whose successful movies put Lebanese on the international map while capturing the hearts of the Lebanese audience due to their realism, the taboo topics explored, and authentic portrayal of characters. This campaign is an insight into the inspiring journey of Nadine’s career that created some of the most memorable Lebanese movies for which she has received worldwide acclaim and whose messages resound so well with our core audience that we gave them a forum for discussion online.