2014 Winners & Shortlists

Brief Explanation

Filipinos in the UAE, much like the rest of the expatriate population, are used to seeing ethnically-neutral communication, especially when it comes from multinational brands that use globally approved imagery. They don’t see mainstream advertising as especially relevant to them.

The Brief

There are over 700,000 Filipinos in the UAE. Many of whom haven’t seen their loved ones in many years. Nokia decided to run a campaign giving Filipinos a chance to win a trip back home. The challenge was to find a way of communicating the promotion to this target audience in a way that is as emotionally relevant as the prize it offered.

How the final design was conceived

Teks cards are a popular story telling medium that our audience grew up with in The Philippines. Created as an affordable alternative to the cinema, the cards featured storyboard clips of local films. For the campaign, we created a story about a man who reluctantly came to Dubai for better opportunities, leaving behind his family. The story was told on our Teks cards - illustrated by an authentic Fillipino illustrator and printed on the exact type of paper used by the original teks cards. These flyers/inserts were perforated, letting the audience tear them into tiny cards as collectible giveaways.

Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market

Over 40,000 sheets of teks cards were given away to the audience in key locations in the UAE - most of them actively collected by the audience. Over 600 Filipinos participated in the promotion in just one week - all of whom took the time to write their stories to submit to Nokia. Three winners were flown home on Valentine's Day and their journey will be televised as episodes in a tie-up between Nokia and the Filipino Channel TFC.