2013 Winners & Shortlists

The Brief

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.

Describe how the promotion developed from concept to implementation

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. 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.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

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).

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

Facebook was a perfect fit for this promotion given no time and little budget. The inherent social nature of Facebook and its sharing infrastructure accelerated our campaign to get people to join sides in a water balloon fight.