2014 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

Describe the current situation around Branded Content & Entertainment in your country, or the region where this campaign appeared. Include any restrictions or regulations imposed by TV stations, broadcasting companies, government or other regulating body. (200 words) With no detailed data or monitoring of Branded Entertainment within the Middle-East, forecasting or providing an accurate summary of the market is somewhat difficult. However, from our own research (both brand & audiences) and of course BE campaigns, we’ve seen that there is a real appetite for creating and consuming content in the region. In terms of the restrictions, the rules around what can and can’t be done by brands vary significantly around the region such as KSA, but in many markets there is a lack of regulation (or governing body) that means a brands presence can be easily placed, associated or integrated within a piece of content. However, topics, themes and even situations must be taken into consideration when planning and producing any piece of Branded Content. These include: • The clothing and appearance of females • The proximity between female & male presenters • The treatment of culturally sensitive topics such as marriage and national dress • The use and discussion of Religion • The exclusion of any subject matter relating to sex & alcohol in KSA

Results

Persil Abaya Shampoo has been arguably the regions most successful piece of NPD, partly down to ‘Arwa3 Abaya’ – a TV series for amateur Abaya designers launched in 2009. Fast-forward to 2013 and Persil faced its biggest challenge to date, with P&G creating ‘Tide Abaya’ and supporting it with marketing budgets some 44% greater than Persil. Therefore, the challenge was twofold, first to defend the brand’s market position from Tide; and second to find innovative ways to convert indifferent category users to become Persil Abaya Shampoo advocates. After four seasons we knew that exclusivity of designs and access to the shows talent were key ingredients to success so our idea was to provide greater ‘contact’ with the series content This season, we wanted to use this content and the Arwa3 Abaya franchise to develop a stronger connection with our consumer, thus we designed a campaign of ‘Contact’ with four key themes, namely: touch, collaborate, reach and meet. Reach –To increase engagement, a weekly Q&A program allowing fans to reach out to cast members by posting questions about anything they wanted in exchange for a personalized video response. Touch - a customized app giving women the chance to win unique designs by collecting points through QR codes placed in-store and in Abaya stores (using Google maps) – a first of its kind. Collaborate - a crowd-sourcing initiative called ‘The Ultimate Abaya’ enabling Facebook fans to get involved in their own design process by helping brand ambassador Rabia Zargarpur - another first. Meet - a community competition where one lucky fan could gain an all-access pass to filming and help the teams on their weekly design challenge. Aside, from these unique ‘Contact’ initiatives, further support was given through TVC’s/Integrations, sponsorship, search, online display, PR, events and print.

After 4 successful seasons of Persil Abaya's Arwa3 Abaya, we knew we had a loyal following, however we needed to up our game and strengthen engagement even further. We enticed our loyal audience and past viewers by teasers and a build up to the content stemming from the past seasons. We invited hopefuls through a nation-wide on ground recruitment call and used this to promote the show to attract new viewers. We enhanced the show format to include more drama and reality show elements that hooked our viewers even further. When the content activation kicked off, we used multiple channels to push this content across to viewers, from the most personal device (Mobile) to the most mass channel (TV).

By continuing to build Arwa3 Abaya’s franchise and provide women with greater ‘Contact’ to the show, we’ve successfully fought off Tide’s attack. With entertaining, relevant and uniquely accessible content, we’ve heightened Persil’s association with Abaya care and strengthened brand image. Throughout the campaign we reached a total of 5.4 million people with a unique average reach of nearly 100,000 Women per day (Source: Facebook). The Persil Abaya community grew the number of fan by 32% -more than double initial targets. Not to mention that engagement rates rose by 116% vs. Arwa3 Abaya Four (Source: Facebook)- 13% greater than initially targeted. Persil Abaya Shampoo’s attribute of “is an expert in Abaya wash” increased by +8% (Source: Integral). With sales of Persil Abaya Shampoo increasing by 11% vs. 2012- more than double what we targeted- and we’ve maintained the brands number #1 position in the liquid detergents (Source: Neilsen). In addition, we’ve also broken ground by increasing category penetration and trial of Persil Abaya by 3% (Source: TNS World Panel). Persil Abaya Shampoo remains number one!