2014 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

Branded content has been evolving greatly over the years, whereby the MENA region has moved towards more challenging and risk-taking entertainment. TV stations, broadcasting companies, and governments have opened their doors to louder branded entertainment. TV copies, print ads, radio ads—all these mediums now serve to strengthen and better depict the each brand’s personality and campaign message. Using celebrities/stars is a common factor in branded entertainment in our region, but the main issue is that the very notion of “the good old days” is what still has not been cracked. Here our brand embraced a challenge, and we utilized this opportunity by using CGI face replacement to bring back the two original Boogie and TamTam puppets, Nelly the Queen of all Riddles but 30 years younger, and Fatoota. But the biggest surprise of all was Uncle Fouad the Godfather of all Arab comedians deceased 2006. Therefore, our brand truly heightened the stakes of branded entertainment by launching Yalla Nekamel Lametna and venturing into unmarked territory within the world of branded entertainment regionally.

Results

Ramadan is a month that used to bring families and people closer together, but with the rise of technology and personal communication devices, people have actually gotten further apart replacing a message for a call and call for a visit. The spirit of Ramadan that brought everyone closer was lost. And here our brand embraced a challenge…We wanted to make today's generation feel the true essence of what Ramadan is all about, in hope to unite them under one motive: BRINGING BACK TODAY THE RAMADAN SPIRIT OF YESTERDAY. We decided to use the same thing that took people apart to get them back together…. Technology!! Using the latest CGI face replacement technique, we recreated legendary Ramadan entertainers to revisit Ramadan in 2013! We hijacked all Ramadan tents with memorabilia and merchandise turning Egypt into a festive gathering occasion. This hijack did not stop there; we branded trucks, gas stations, cafes, kiosks, and local eateries. Our iconic visuals were everywhere you look. At this point our fans were blown away with our campaign. You had fans uploading pictures of themselves with Pepsi Ramadan merchandise on Instagram; fans writing riveting comments about the campaign across all social mediums. By then, the launch of our website www.yallaramdanmasr.com came just in time, whereby our online engagement continued on this web portal that was specifically created for this campaign. This web portal continued to pave the way for our CSR campaign… Given that Ramadan is a charitable time and since the resurrected legends were best known for their daily riddle episodes often solved in family gatherings, we engaged consumers with riddles every day, all in turn for our CSR movement. Every day, a single riddle would reach consumers through digital billboards, radio, TV and social media.

We generally got a very emotional response from the audience with most saying the film brought them to tears. Our Facebook page became an overnight sensation, as countless comments flew expressing their appreciation of the film. The Facebook page received over 550,000 new likes boosting our total page likes to over 2 million. A lot of meme and spoofs spread across the Internet as well. Several magazines and newspapers voted it as the best ad in Ramadan. including Campaign Magazine. Most of all, everyone wanted to know how we used graphics to bring back so revealed our secret through two Behind the Scenes viral copies. All in all, this marks our most successful Ramadan campaign, as it received over 815 Million impressions within a single month!

We made the most talked about campaign this Ramadan! We broke records. Records for number of views, records for the number of comments and likes, but most importantly, we broke the record for number of joyful tears brought to people. At the end we truly brought back the festive spirit of Ramadan. We received over 55,000 viral comments within first three weeks and over 90,000 by end of campaign. Our ad was the most viewed branded content in the MENA Region, with over 5 million views in the first 3 weeks, and over 12 million by the end of the campaign, making it the most viewed Ramadan content ever! We achieved the highest level of engagement with a branded content in the MENA region with the number of comments achieved, and with 422,000 likes within first three weeks, and over 600,000 likes by end of the campaign. All our content has driven over 4.9 million visits to Pepsi platforms; with over 60% of which achieved only in the first 2 weeks. At the end we didn't simply connect with the people during Ramadan – We made Pepsi was the most talked about brand and people’s favourite campaign of the month.