2013 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

Up until the end of 2011, the concept of branded content did not exist in Egypt. Program sponsorship was there followed by product placement in movies, programs and drama series. This phase lasted for quite some time. It was during 2012, that Egypt has crossed the thin line between product placement into branded content. 2012 saw the production and airing of such programs produced by big brand names. Even though these programs have generated high ratings due to the amount in money that’s being placed into production and developing good content, TV stations still treat it as paid advertisement. So aside from the investment placed behind production, another budget will be spent on the media airing.

Results

Veet, a premium hair removal cream, struggled on sales and awareness in Egypt ever since its launch. Hair removal is surely a regular part of their beauty regime, however, they usually rely on homemade reliable and affordable solution called “halawa”. Hair removal, unlike their other beauty regime is not openly discussed in Egypt, as it is very personal and considered merely a hygienic function. While there are lots of celebrities’ endorsements for other beauty products, there were none for hair removal in Egypt. We saw a huge opportunity in shifting perception from a strictly functional to a beauty brand by doing what was never attempted before – getting a celebrity to endorse a hair removal brand! Mona Zaky scored the highest amongst the influential Egyptian celebrities in the research conducted to identify our celebrity. After a lot of convincing, Mona agreed to be the face of Veet in Egypt. Apart from the obvious visible endorsements on media and packaging Mona was also utilised for the launch of Veet Facebook fanpage. Mona invited the aspiring Veet fans to send in their pictures to participate in a makeover competition. We partnered with a leading TV station in Egypt and created an exclusive content called “Gamalek Ma3 Veet” (Your Beauty With Veet) that captured the journey of the seven lucky participants over a period of 1 and a half months. A team of beauty experts along with Mona assisted them with advice on fashion, make-up, hair, nutrition and health tips. A lucky participant won a trip to Paris with cash reward for shopping all paid by Veet.

Egyptian women were constantly looking for tips and information on enhancing their beauty and followed their celebrity for aspiration. We identified this need and aspiration and utilized it into creating the makeover beauty program with Mona Zaki. Consumers were very interested in the content and this was obvious when we placed the episodes and short edits of the beauty tips given by our experts on our facebook page. Consumers shared the videos, liked them and in other instances started dialogues with us asking more questions about those tips and the program in general.

We managed to break the stereotypical attitude towards a hair removal product and convert it into a beauty brand. We received 1,133 applicants to the make over competition. The make over TV program was viewed by almost 1.4 million viewers in total. The fanpage was amongst the top 10 ranked FMCG page in Egypt. With 372,000 fans till date, Veet Egypt is also the biggest community amongst Veet worldwide. With 0.7% engagement rate, Veet fans on Facebook were the most engaged group in Egypt during the show.