2014 Winners & Shortlists

The Brief

Knowing that this is a Public Awareness initiative that is directly related to cars, we needed to deliver our message to drivers as a primary target, which required us to think outside our usual customer base. Our strategy was to place the message inside the cars without having the drivers looking. So we needed them out of their vehicles, while we would still have access to the cars’ interior. We instantly thought of petrol and carwash stations where drivers get out of their cars for some time, giving us the window of opportunity to implement our operation.

Creative Execution

Being a newspaper, Okaz’s strength and appeal is all about words. So our idea was based on a play on simple yet powerful words, smartly manipulated into double-meaning sentences in both Arabic and English. Words gave us a flexible platform to work with, especially that we could seamlessly introduce the seatbelt element into the sentences to connect terms and come out with a greater meaning every time. By sticking to what Okaz does and knows best, we managed to introduce a piece of Okaz in every car, which constituted the essence of our creative idea.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

We had to think outside the box, because drivers usually get rid of flyers the minute they get them. So we decided to place a shocking sticker-card message on every steering wheel, while cars were being serviced and their owners were not looking, making it impossible for drivers to miss it or get rid of it. We also made the card interactive: by reading the distressing message ending with a seatbelt buckle, a driver would notice the inside part to pullout; and when he does, he’d realize that this is in fact one happy message interconnected with a seatbelt element.

Results

As a public awareness campaign, results are difficult to measure in numbers. Therefore we observed reactions. The first remarkable effect was that none of the drivers threw it away, like it would be with regular leaflets. The drivers were interested in knowing what it is when they found them on steering wheels. Expressions would change instantly as they pulled out the inside part. Most drowned in their thoughts for a minute before driving. But the most rewarding effect was to find that only 2/10 had their seatbelts on when they arrived but after reading, 7/10 left the stations with their seatbelts on.