2013 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

Head & Shoulders practically invented anti-dandruff shampoo. And that was the issue, as Arab youth did not connect with the brand. They considered it old fashioned. We needed to connect with youth and in the process make Head & Shoulders cool. So we went underground and found a movement among Arab youth so powerful that if harnessed correctly, would take Head & Shoulders from the supermarkets and supermoms to the gritty streets of the Middle East. That movement was freestyle. In the process, we also discovered that Arab youth spent most of their time on social media sites. So we created Freestyle Rising. A freestyle community on Facebook. It was a perfect fit for our brand, which stood for confidence, as freestylers too needed confidence, while free styling.

Results

In just 4 weeks of the launch our page got 200,000 likes. We then created a freestyle football game on our page that rewarded freestyle football kits as weekly prizes and the top scorers won a trip to watch the most watched Arab program, Arabs Got Talent finale. During this period we also teamed up with the world’s top freestylers, Bill & Jeremy and got them to perform during the Arabs Got Talent finale and also asked the show’s finalists the simple question, “What gives them the confidence?” We even roped in the show’s celebrity host Raya, had her catch the freestyle virus and get a quick lesson in freestyle from Bill & Jermey that went viral across social media. It was time to turn up the excitement a few notches, so in mid 2012 we introduced another Freestyle football competition with a bigger purpose, to find the no 1 Arab champion from 8 countries to represent the region in the F3 world Freestyle Series. And in January 2013 we had 16 of the region’s top freestylers compete on the steps of the Burj Khalifa, and found our Arab champion.

The first thing we did on our page was salute freestylers with an online video which received 20,000 Youtube views, 25,000 Facebook views, 5000 shares, 7500 likes and 2450 comments in a few days of its launch. Simultaneously we launched the first activity on our page - A freestyle football competition where we got 3 freestylers from 3 different countries to post videos of themselves. Different challenges were created weekly for 4 weeks. Youth liked, shared, commented & voted for their winner. The response was unprecedented.

The Head & Shoulders Facebook page currently has over a million fans and growing. For an initiative that began in the Middle East, and now Head & Shoulders global is planning to implement “freestyle” as a platform for the brand worldwide. The brand has begun its turnaround, from clinical men in white coats talking about efficacy to a cooler image of youth doing tricks with footballs.