2013 Winners & Shortlists

The Brief

Our client, Sepideh is a Pilates instructor who teaches at various Dubai gyms and takes private classes at clients’ homes. To grow her client base of private students, she wanted to target Arab women, mostly homemakers, overwhelmed with family responsibilities. These women, in the affluent residential areas of Dubai are too busy to commit to a fixed exercise schedule; prefer to exercise at their own time; in the privacy of their home and don’t mind paying a premium for such classes. We had to capture their interest while introducing them to the ‘Pilates’ exercise form in case they didn’t know.

Creative Execution

Pilates is an exercise form that uses essential characteristics like rolling, bending, folding to the core, and tapping into the body’s full flexibility. The giveaway we designed got the recipients to actually experience these steps of Pilates and served as an educational tool for those who didn’t know what lies at the core of the Pilates practice. The fact that the piece doubled up as a mouse pad gave reason to the recipients to log on and find out more about Sepideh’s offering and more about Pilates.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

We left a small Pilates mat at our target's doorsteps. But this was no ordinary mat. Rolled, and wrapped with a catchy message, it urged people to interact in order to get rewarded. On rolling out the mat, the recipient was made to interact using the 3 main steps of Pilates - bending, lifting and folding to the core. Each action cleverly revealed Sepideh’s details and offered a free introductory class on booking private sessions with her. Finally, the mat could be stretched out and used as a mouse pad to log on to Sepideh’s website for more information.

Results

Our giveaway had a great impact. Out of over 300 mats dropped in residences in affluent areas of Dubai, our client received 55 inquiries, and 23 women booked Pilates sessions, with a 7.6 % response rate. Moreover, the communication piece educated women about this unique form of exercise. The first free trial class offered by Sepideh got quite a few of them saying they liked how the exercise made them feel and helped spread the word about her services.