2012 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

In carrying out an anti-counterfeit campaign, we realized the best way to demonstrate the danger and inconvenience of counterfeit products is to give people a direct taste of it. Building on the idea that “the closest things to you can be fake”, what would be closer to you on social media than your own Facebook profile? By targeting key influencers through Facebook as opposed to simply inviting them to a press conference, we turned our victims into ambassadors that helped us spread our message online.

The Brief

Our objective was to create an anti-counterfeit awareness campaign and promote the client’s call center. We wanted to unconventionally reach out to the key people who are the most active online and have the biggest following.

Results

Without a budget, our Facebook stunt technically reached 250 major influencers, but subsequent coverage reached more than 40,000. With major blogs covering the story, it reached 80% of the Lebanese blogosphere. It has now even reached the Middle East’s leading university, The American University of Beirut, where it’s being used in class as a successful case study on the creatively effective use of social media.

Execution

We used International Counterfeit Day to directly target our selected bloggers and journalists, faking their Facebook profiles a week in advance. Their fake profile included their picture and a name very similar to their own. Each person got a Facebook friend request from their own imposter. When the victims received friend requests from their impostors, panic struck the social media scene. Within 24 hours, all our victims had asked their friends to report the fake profiles as news of the issue spread. We then sent a personalized message to the targeted individuals, explaining the campaign and offering them an exclusive media kit.

The Situation

After 15 years of Lebanese civil war and 20 years of instability, resulting in poorly controlled borders, counterfeit is 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. The public needed to know. And so we needed journalists and bloggers to pick up the story and spread it.

The Strategy

Using the fact that in Arabic the words imitation / counterfeit/ and fake all mean the same thing, we wanted to spread the message that: "the closest things to you can be fake". We wanted March 15, the International Counterfeit Day, to be the climax of our campaign. Knowing that Facebook is the most popular social media platform in Lebanon, we decided to carry out the biggest social media stunt in the history of the Middle East. We wanted to unconventionally use Facebook to directly target selected 250 influencers, bloggers and journalists who would help spread awareness, instead of opting for the region’s usual PR strategy to communicate to them: a typical press conference.