2013 Winners & Shortlists

TOUCH RE-LAUNCH

BrandTOUCH
Product/ServiceTOUCH
EntrantJWT BEIRUT, LEBANON
CategoryCONSUMER SERVICES
Entrant Company JWT BEIRUT, LEBANON
Advertising Agency JWT BEIRUT, LEBANON

The Campaign

The telecom sector in Lebanon is state-owned and the government granted two international operators to manage it. Due to legal matters, MTC TOUCH, the leading mobile operator, couldn't retain their brand name. Their objective was to carry-out a total overhauling by re-branding into TOUCH, strengthen their market leadership and ensure all brand equities are transferred to the new brand; however, due to the increasing criticism of the telecom sector in Lebanon and the fact that it‘s among the top 5 most expensive countries (call/minute), we decided to approach the change from a PR perspective. Inspired by the Arab Spring and the constant change in the Middle East; we turned to our 2 million-strong subscribers (total population est. 4million), and gave them the platform to make the change they would like to see, and help the brand they own make the change it needed for the better. Riding on the increasing influence of social media and blogs, we chose online as our main channel and launched inmynewworld.com, a crowdsourcing platform, to create the content of our re-launch campaign. We developed an app; created recording booths, radio programming, rolled out an online and offline campaign giving the people a voice for change.

The Brief

The aim was to create a campaign for the people by the people to re-launch the brand and ensure a smooth transition for the brand, engrave the new brand in the minds of the customers, retain the market leadership, create new brand perception and build affinity with the Lebanese people. Also, complete the on ground (visible) change of the brand The campaign was aimed at all the 4.5m Lebanese people, the stakeholders, but mainly the 2 million MTC Touch subscribers. The campaign had to appeal to every citizen young and old who practically own the brand

Results

The campaign made international and local news, inmynewworld.com had over 50000 visits in less than 2 weeks were thousands of videos were uploaded. With an average spent time of 12 minutes/visit. Thousands of people called to the radio stations and recorded their messages resulting in hours long of content.

Execution

We launched right before the weekend people woke up to morning shows inviting them to share their new world. Outdoors with simple messages, to avoid censorship, directed them to inmynewworld.com. The campaign carried no logo giving it a social movement feel. Video recording booths in direct sync with our website were installed to maximize reach. #inmynewworld was launched supported by web banners, emails, sms and ambient branding. Upon landing on the site a one-minute manifesto automatically plays explaining the movement and inviting people to join our campaign. The first TV ad, radio and print were created after 48hrs of receiving the consumer generated content. Every two days we released new material showcasing different people and tagging with our own message of change. The censorship rejected many controversial edits but somehow they found their way online. Nevertheless, we managed to launch a campaign created by the people for the people.

The Situation

The country is severely divided amongst itself due to political and religious conflicts resulting from 15 years of civil war. the people cant find a common ground and they cant seem to meet eye to eye; they lost faith and many decided to leave the country in search of a better life. since half of the Lebanese constitute MTC TOUCH data base we believed that we should call on the them to create the new change, get them involved in the brand they own in hope of finding a common ground amongst themselves.

The Strategy

Inspired by the Arab springs and the many changes that were happening in the surrounding countries and the fact that we wanted to include the Lebanese audience in our change; we chose to create a Lebanese Spring. since the social media and the online played a major role in driving the political change we also anchored our movement in the online channel. the strategy was simple grant people the opportunity to share with the world the kind of change they would like to see, the world they would like to live in if they had the chance to recreate it themselves. collect the content generated by the people and turn it into a relaunch campaign.

Credits

Name Company Role
Jwt-Beirut JWT - BEIRUT