2014 Winners & Shortlists

Brief Explanation

Ramadan is a month that used to bring families/people closer together. But with the rise of technology, people have actually gotten further apart. The spirit of Ramadan that brought everyone closer was lost; here our brand embraced a challenge… We wanted to make today's generation feel the true essence of Ramadan, 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 brought back the two original Boogie and TamTam puppets, Nelly the Queen of all Riddles, Fatoota, and the biggest surprise of all was Uncle Fouad the Godfather of all Arab comedians deceased 2006. To complement our film, we covered the country with imagery of these Ramadan stars. Our followers further engaged with the celebrities online (www.yallaramdanmasr.com), on-ground and through TV daily-riddles for a charitable cause of bringing joy to orphaned children. Our message reached everyone, everywhere. This marks our most successful Ramadan campaign.

Creative Execution

In casting, the first step was contacting the celebrities. Since the concept was built of the appearances of legendary celebrities from the golden age of Ramadan, we had to obtain rights to using the Boogie and TamTam puppets and a CGI version of Fouad El Mohandes. After that, we signed contracts with Nelly and Samir Ghaneim. A total of 17 scripts were written before we reached what is essentially a remake of “A Christmas Carol”. Once the script was approved both locally and regionally, we proceeded with casting the main character and his family members. Over 50 teenagers auditioned for the role before we settled for our final casting of our main character. We wanted someone who has never acted before and were lucky to find someone who was both photogenic and natural in his acting. We were entering very much a Pepsi advert world and we wanted to retain all the values of Pepsi, but at the same time wanted to keep it grounded so people could relate to it as a story. The rest of the family and all the extras were cast after reviewing hundreds of audition tapes. We also let the actors rehearse all their scenes several times to that they could bond and feel like a genuine members of a family.