2013 Winners & Shortlists

The Brief

Arab Ad is one the region's leading and oldest industry magazines. For their June issue, they were tackling the subject of the battle between traditional media and digital. Seeing as magazine stands seem to be cluttered with so many publications, it was our objective to make this issue of ArabAd stand out from the crowd. Also, the magazine is sent to every major agency in the region, giving us an additional immediate audience to direct our communication at.

Describe how the promotion developed from concept to implementation

Seeing as the June issue was discussing the battle between traditional media and digital, we decided to illustrate the fight literally. But it wasn't enough to just depict the fight on the cover, we wanted readers to be able to interact with the cover fully. Creating the entire cover in-house, we worked on setting the "scene" with the boxing ring on the cover and developing the "fight" digitally through the app. As a result, our readers would be able to experience both mediums simultaneously and decide on the winner for themselves.

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

Our cover received a great amount of interaction. Through the application we were able to determine that over 760 users had scanned the cover and by the end of the year that number had increased to over 2500. Although the cover came out in June, we realized through the increased scanning throughout the year, that people who had purchased the magazine had obviously kept it to share with friends, family and colleagues, thus spreading interest in the cover's design. In addition to the consumer appreciation, ArabAd stated the June cover was one of its most successful yet.

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

By allowing readers to interact with the cover in a way that depicted the article inside, we were able to connect with ArabAd's target reader, using their language. As a result, this promoted the ArabAd brand within the advertising community, reminding the industry that it was still one of the region's reference in contemporary communication.