2012 Winners & Shortlists

Results and Effectiveness

After three weeks on air the TV series had 10,000+ fans and followers across its social media sites of which nearly 40% were continuously engaged and ‘talking about this,’ compared to 10% for other primetime dramas featuring on the same channel. The number of active interaction on Facebook alone exceeded 34,000. During this period the series’ YouTube channel reached 450,000+ views apart from 160,000+ views on MBC’s VOD site. The series earned media coverage across the region worth $270,000+ in just three weeks. Less than a month after it started airing, MBC announced that a second season of the series will be produced and aired in May 2012.

Creative Execution

In building the social media universe of the characters, profiles were established for several of them months before the marketing campaign. These were populated with real content that each character would realistically post, comments and tweets about events in the news and in and around Dubai including photographs from events they would be interested in (eg. the F1 grand prix, the Dubai International Film Festival, Egyptian revolution anniversary, etc). Blog posts were created for the writer character and a Google+ profile set-up for the tech savvy character. By the time users discovered these pages, each had personality and credibility, providing an insight into the characters that would be appearing on their screens.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

Over a third of the Arab population is under 30. In a highly competitive and cluttered market, MBC Group wanted to develop a break-out television drama for this increasingly media savvy audience. Recognizing and embracing the way that young people lived their lives, we re-imagined the television drama, 04. We adopted a transmedia approach to immerse its audience into the lives of four young men from across the Arab world – each struggling with real issues that reflect the lives and struggles of the audience. Through detailed social media profiles of the main characters viewers were able to engage with the show at a personal level, and often in real time. 04’s characters spill out of the confines of a 30 minute television drama to respond not only to fans, but also to other characters and even events taking place in the real world.