2013 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

Branded entertainment in the MENA region is still in its infancy. While there are clients and networks that have embraced this form of communication, there are still several networks which area wary of how the communication is perceived. With the prevalence of state run networks across the region, the ability to create content is limited. It is more accepted with private and paid channels. The ability for networks & talent to craft carefully created programs to appear as though they are not a paid endorsement of the product is the key to balanced success. This narrow window of accepted branded content is navigated by only a few agencies with specialized divisions.

Results

Snow Penguins flew all the way from Sea World in the US to make Ski Dubai their new home. Ski Dubai had spent a fortune to get them here to make this the biggest news of 2012. But with endless leisure attractions to choose from, UAE residents remained largely unaware and unexcited about them. The challenge was to make Ski Dubai stand out and get families to visit the Snow Penguins. But we needed to achieve this on a shoe-string budget. If people are not visiting the penguins our idea was to take the penguins to the streets of Dubai. Abe & Sara, like most tourists to the UAE were distracted by the beauty of the city and spent their time exploring Dubai. Our new Penguin friends quickly became the “news” on Penguin News Network (PNN), a spoof news channel specifically created to follow A&S's journey, documenting and reporting their adventure via spoof news columns. UAE’s leading tabloid 7 Days became the official newspaper of the Penguins. We turned Abe & Sara’s story into daily news telling it through PNN columns. These mock columns were placed alongside regular news to make the content look genuine. Every morning people woke up to discover A&S’s newest adventure. We negotiated with 4 radio stations (Virgin Radio, Suno FM, Radio 1 & Star FM) to turn PNN content into breaking news on radio which helped listeners keep up with the story. We even created a spoof movie trailer on radio to promote A&S's journey. As with all modern news the content didn’t stay offline as the story was seamlessly integrated into the Penguin YouTube channel in a series called ‘Spot the Penguins’ which chronicled their amusing adventures from landing in Dubai all the way to the big family reunion.

Leveraging the growing screen content online, we created a unique program series on Youtube called Spot the Penguins. The series told the story of two penguins Abe & Sara who travel all the way from Deep Sea World in the US to Dubai to reunite with their cousins in Ski Dubai. The story was serialized on YouTube through Ski Dubai’s Facebook page. The audience was also able to follow their story via Abe & Sara’s personal travel blog as well as Penguin News Network’s updates in 7 days (UAE’s leading newspaper) and 4 radio stations.

6 weeks into the campaign footfall to Ski Dubai increased by 11%, driven mostly by large families. Overall sales for Ski Dubai increased by 20%. (Source : MAF Leisure Sales/Footfall Tracker) Intention of visiting Penguins improved by 11% points to 40% post campaign. Awareness of Penguins increased by 17% points to 46% post-campaign. PNN became as household name as newspapers was the highest recalled medium with 54% people associating it with the campaign (Source : Effective Measure Brand Health Tracker) On Social Media, Spot the Penguins series got 130,000 views in just 6 weeks. The average engagement rate on the Facebook page increased from 2% to 11 % during the campaign. In addition we increased the fan base by 17% (12000 new fans recruited) during the campaign.(Source : Facebook/Youtube Insights) We achieved all of the above with an offline budget of only $14,000.