2012 Winners & Shortlists

The Brief

After 15 years of Lebanese civil war resulting in poorly controlled borders, counterfeit products are widespread. They’re everywhere, yet barely noticed. Almost any brand has a fake equivalent in stores. Our objective was to create an anti-counterfeit awareness campaign and promote the client’s call center. We wanted March 15, the International Counterfeit Day, to be the climax of our campaign, so 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.

Describe how the promotion developed from concept to implementation

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". To demonstrate this and attract opinion leaders’ attention, we created fake profiles using their real profile pictures and names very similar to their own. 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.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

Without a budget, our Facebook stunt technically reached 250 major influencers, but subsequent coverage reached more than 40,000. Our prank had turned our victims into ambassadors; all were excited to start a conversation on counterfeit, helping us reach 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. All this translated into the 850% increase in the number of reports the client’s call center received.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

The best way to demonstrate the danger and inconvenience of counterfeiting is to give people a direct taste of it. Knowing that Facebook in Lebanon is the number 1 social network, and 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 these key influencers, we turned our victims into ambassadors as they helped us spread our message online.