2013 Winners & Shortlists

Results and Effectiveness

With one week left, both teams reached their maximum numbers. But that didn’t stop fans from taking to our Facebook page and demanding to enlist. We increased registration by 1,000 slots, which crashed our servers and were promptly filled up in less than 1 hour. Dubai Police had to intervene to stop the campaign for public safety reasons. In less than 4 weeks, the campaign launched the biggest water balloon fight in the region with 33,000 spectators and over 8,000 participants. The client’s Facebook engagement increased 700% and reached nearly 600,000 people (over 25% of the population in Dubai).

Creative Execution

The campaign started with an app that lets people enlist in either the Blues or the Yellows in the fight, see which of their friends (or enemies) are on which team, and spread propaganda to recruit even more friends. After initial seeding via Facebook ads and Email blasts, the trash-talking-my-team-is-better-than-your-team spirit took on a life of its own. Over the next three weeks, the Blues and the Yellows did our marketing for us, driven purely by the desire to throw water balloons at their Facebook friends’ faces.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

For our client Dubai Events & Promotions Establishment, we created the first ever water balloon fight in the region. The bigger challenge was to recruit thousands of people in less than 4 weeks… with little media budget. It’s hard enough getting 8 friends to show up for dinner. Imagine getting over 8,000 people from all walks of life to come together for a water balloon fight. We turned social media, normally a place for friends, into a place for “enemies”. With a campaign that taps into people’s innate desire to take sides. (Think cat lovers vs. dog lovers, Arsenal vs. Manchester United fans, Coca Cola addicts vs. the Pepsi generation.)