2014 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

Online entertainment consumption in the GCC is high, 7 videos a day per internet user in Saudi Arabia. However, it’s not the restrictions on TV broadcasts that's driving them there, after all, the same restrictions apply to their online entertainment. The real source is the social context. When you have large families, the TV remote argument becomes pretty heated. So, you have a lot of compromise, leading to multiple screens at the time of viewership when you factor in phones and tablets. You also have a privacy issue when it comes to “me time”. That’s why most (66%) of the branded entertainment consumption happens on a mobile device. You would think that mobile access is “on the go”, but the average YouTube visit is 30 minutes. This tells us that even though they are accessing the videos on their mobile, they are staying in one place as they do so. The fact that 41% of them use it for product information is even more of a reason to talk to them. The conclusion is that as long as we make sure to take the region’s culture into consideration, branded entertainment is a great way to tell women about our products.

Results

Research shows that only 4% of women in the world think they are beautiful. Dove thinks differently and tasked us to show women that they are beautiful just the way they are. We had to demonstrate this to as many women as possible whilst sampling their range of beauty products to them. We did not believe that women would change the way they thought about themselves if Dove simply just told them that they were beautiful. We believed that they would change their opinion if it came from someone they cared for the most, like a best friend, daughter or sister. This gave us our big idea. Dove Surprises gave the women closest to them the chance to show them how beautiful they are with surprise messages and gifts delivered straight to their doors or through social media. After all, who would you believe, a brand or your Best Friend? With every personal message delivered, women across the UAE realized something beautiful about themselves that they never thought about before. Dove got their message out to thousands of women that they are more beautiful than they think and this small but powerful gesture was shared by millions across social media channels.

Our audience were drawn to the content through the physical interaction with our Dove Brand ambassadors, the Dove Arabia Facebook page, online paid advertising and organic sharing of the content via social media channels.

22,435 women engaged in this activation on our stands. They either wrote the message on a note or had their photograph shared via social media carrying a message for their loved ones. 33,547 engaged online between, the app, Facebook and twitter. 3,174 women were actually surprised by their loved ones through the various Dove channels. We were able to share these surprises spreading 3,000,000 smiles around with the number of views on YouTube. The relationship we built with our consumers, and the impact we left on women was revealed through a sale increase of 15%.