2014 Winners & Shortlists

Brief Explanation

In the Arab world, we often find ourselves doing things that don’t really make sense, yet we do them anyway as part of culturally accepted behaviors. Call them idiosyncratic or plain bizarre, all of us at one point have participated in these strange habits, whether we’d like to openly admit it or not, one thing is for sure, we love to openly laugh about it as Arabs. This unique insight inspired our campaign TVC, where it is duwring these peculiar moments that Mentos is needed to freshen our thinking with clarity. In this film, we witness our quirky character having an escalating meltdown, as he desperately tries to switch the channel that’s stuck on a classic Mexican soap (his worst nightmare, his grandma’s fantasy). Instinctually like many of us, he beats the remote control on any hard surface he can find, but to no solution. In the end, it takes a simple Mentos candy from his friend to give him some ‘fresh thinking’ to solve the dilemma – a simple battery change. Our TVC encouraged viewers via social media to GIVE THEM A MENTOS! if ever faced with people around them that need some fresh thinking too.

Creative Execution

For our TVC, casting the perfect characters was an extremely crucial process as our campaign is inspired entirely from the peculiar and strange behaviors we partake in an Arab culture. Therefore we needed to reflect this eccentricity in a highly entertaining, humorous and memorable way for viewers. While many TVCs in the region feature well-groomed and polished actors or models, we took a less traditional approach even with our casting, searching for a more unique and offbeat look to our main character, also reflected through his mannerisms. After over 8 rounds of casting across the Middle East, we finally discovered the perfect characters to bring our quirky story to life, and someone willing to leap off the edge of a couch into mid-air without panicking…