2014 Winners & Shortlists

The Brief

City of Smile’s goal was to Launch Close Up’s new whitening variant “crystal frost” in Saudi while maintaining the platform of bringing people closer through the feel fresh smiles that close up creates, in a conservative country. We wanted to increase Close Up’s value share by 3% and penetration in total trade by 2%. (Source: Unilever marketing & AC nielesen product share tracker 2013) Our target was 16-25 year old males and females with active social lives especially online. They also appreciate humor evident by watching YouTube comedy shows.

Creative Execution

Since we wanted to launch a whitening toothpaste we thought of smiles but did it differently –a competition that spread contagious smiles generating more smiles and happier cities. In a place where it’s almost impossible to bring members of the opposite sex together, we succeeded in bringing together our audience, putting a smile on their faces, creating our very own city of smiles. We were able to bring people together in a way relevant to our target, who are looking for new experiences but that also worked within the conservative environment of Saudi Arabia.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

As an intercity competition, partnering with popular comedians in the region, Esh Shelly group, we created a Facebook & mobile application where people were asked to post, share and smile at jokes. Cities competed and the winning city with the most smiles got the chance to host the biggest Esh Shelly comedy show. Not only did the jokes put a smile on the users faces but transformed the application into a fierce competition between cities with consumer generated content. The campaign was supported through several touchpoints including inmall engagement and instore promotion entitling winners to VIP tickets to the show.

Results

Jeddah the wining city with a total of 180,000 smiles (Source: city of smiles application) For the comedy event a total 5200 attendees vs an expected 3000 (source: Red sea mall footfall figures). The campaign had a great impact on the brand, increasing CloseUp’s Value share and total trade penetration by 3% (Source: AC Nielsen product share tracker 2013). Facebook and twitter fans increased respectively to 190,107 (25%) and 6,181 followers in one month. (Source: facebook analytics and twitter)