2013 Winners & Shortlists

Results and Effectiveness

Due to its interactive nature, the initiative became contagious through hundreds of websites & blogs in the region across disciplines. Picking up from online media, Press and TV spread regional awareness. The campaign received support across media from major youth influencers like Ahmad Al Shugairi, Sheikha Hessa and Fahad Al Butairi. 200 students generated content and conversations, engaging 120,000 other students. The most valuable result of Ripples of Happiness is measured by the smiles it created and the shift in perception it brought among an entire generation. Who would spread the Ripples for generations to come.

Creative Execution

We recruited 200 students who identified problems in their community, people voted online for which problem each University would tackle. From day one, each University was empowered by customized iPad apps connected to Team pages on a Microsite, Twitter and Facebook. We created a competition and leveraged the social media platform to spread the Ripples beyond the teams, to the entire university, friends and the larger community to gather votes that would help them win this competition. Over 6 weeks, the teams unlocked different challenges towards their goal and streamed live feeds, videos, photos and stories to the Microsite, Twitter and Facebook gathering shares, interactions and as importantly, votes along the way. At the end of six weeks, winning projects received aid from the Coca-Cola Company to be implemented on a larger scale.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

BACKGROUND_ For most in the Middle East, taking social initiatives is driven by religious beliefs, guilt or a surge of emotion. CHALLENGE_ The Coca-Cola Foundation wanted to create a CSR campaign and change the perception of doing good to others, to a basic act of humanity. But how could we turn a CSR campaign into a social movement? IDEA_ We created Ripples of Happiness. 5 Countries. 10 Universities. 6 weeks. Our idea was to target the youth. As they were the most socially active and the most receptive to bring in this change of perception, to the next generation.