2012 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

Our agency was hired by Bloomsbury Publishing at Qatar Foundation to support the launch of Rosie Garthwaite's (Producer at Al Jazeera English) new book, "How to Stay Alive in a War Zone". Unfortunately there was a very limited budget to support the book launch and a very short time frame in which to deliver an event and PR campaign that would drive maximum awareness and buzz for the book launch not only in Doha but also regionally and internationally. We then came up with the idea of hosting Qatar's First Flash Mob to the song, "Staying Alive" which would be hosted at Virgin Megastore at Villaggio Shopping Mall where Rosie would host her first book signing on May 26th 2011. We acquired the support of Desert Dancers, Doha's local dance school as well as Render Farm to produce a short video of the event to launch on YouTube. This attracted more than 20,000 hits in 5 days. (Total hits now at 33,885). We also invited all the local media to attend in which we received great press coverage. Rosie's book launch received a great turn out with many books being sold on the night as well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxDgoXTyx3Y

The Brief

The overall objective was to gain maximum impact and awareness for not only the book launch but also Bloomsbury Publishing at a very limited cost. We needed to appeal to a wide audience of anyone who was interested in books but also those that may not have been familiar with reading across both and English and Arabic audience. The idea needed to create buzz and be broad enough to appeal to all audiences and create a WOW factor / maximum impact. Our conclusion - find a high footfall / traffic location, loud music and something FUN!

Results

On the night, we had around 85 people attend the book signing including a further 45 flash mob dancers and 15 media. We hosted the event at 7pm in Virgin Megastore, a high traffic period in which we had around another 100 spectators on top of our guests. YouTube Video Link - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxDgoXTyx3Y - 111 likes, 26 dislikes Gulf Times Article - http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=437252&version=1&template_id=36&parent_id=16 To date, Rosie has now sold 685 books in Qatar. (International statistics not available)

Execution

We began by bringing in our partners, Desert Dance and Render Farm, to help execute the dance flash mob and video for YouTube. Desert Dance (including 45 volunteer dancers) rehearsed twice a week for three weeks leading up to the event. We also began a soft viral teaser campaign across our associated Facebook & Twitter accounts to start to create buzz for the book launch for the 10 days leading up until the event. We invited one key strategic media partner to follow us throughout the process and document the journey. This was Gulf Times newspaper. They hosted interviews with each of the participants and covered the launch in detail post the event. The event carried out as planned and executed as per our original idea.

The Situation

Bloomsbury were given a very limited budget to launch Rosie's book and needed to find creative ways to generate significant buzz around this launch as it was also their most important book launch for the year and one that would potentially gain them the most amount of credibility and prestige. It was important for them to make the most of this opportunity and this was very challenging without the budget to support them. They needed to find a unique campaign idea to gain cut through in the market and drive awareness for both their brand and the book launch.

The Strategy

Upon meeting with Bloomsbury and Rosie, we were given our goals and objectives and asked to come back to them with something that could deliver them the exposure they wanted at the budget allocated. We spent the following week discussing possible campaign ideas before coming up with the concept of Qatar's First Flash Mob. Upon presenting it to Bloombury and Rosie (which they loved!) we then began the process of signing up our partners and finalising the campaign details for the social media and press campaign to support the event. This involved developing key messages and timeline for social media and PR campaign. We also finalised the press release for the event which we then distributed post the event to all local & regional media in both English and Arabic. We found the English media to be more receptive to the idea and event.