2014 Winners & Shortlists

The Brief

Ramadan is the most hectic time of year for our industry here. It's also a time when agencies and clients send each other greetings and gifts. With very few exceptions, our industry generally sends and receives the same old offerings of Ramadan sweets and lanterns. The response rate of such gifts is generally abysmal with most people forced to reply out of courtesy rather than out of love. Being a creative digitally-inspired agency that respects tradition but strives for innovation, we had to do something different. With 61 different brand owners across 15 core clients, we decided to send each of them something a little more memorable.

Creative Execution

We then sent out 61 different Ramadan greeting cards, each with its own design reflecting the personality of the receiver. Each card had a tailored message and unique QR code, that when scanned opened a specially made video for that person. This required a huge collaborative effort from everyone in our agency who amidst all the Ramadan chaos, found time to create personal greeting videos for their clients. We shot, edited and uploaded 61 videos in 5 days making songs, races, virtual tours, bloopers and more.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

We wanted to achieve a 100% response rate that was genuinely out of love for our efforts. To do that, we decided to send every single one of the 61 brand owners expecting a gift something different. To get them interested, it had to look and feel different. To get them interacting, it had to be digitally inspired. But the real trick was to get them to love it, and that meant making it personal. The idea: Making Ramadan Personal Making Ramadan Personal meant we needed to know everything about our clients. We researched every single person on Social Media and through conversations with the different teams at Digital Republic, we learnt about every brand owner's interests and character.

Results

Our direct campaign proved to be THE most memorable thing our clients received during Ramadan. What we were most happy about was every single brand owner either called, messaged or emailed us thanking us for our efforts. Making Ramadan Personal strengthened our existing relationships and helped us become a top-of-mind partner during the most intense advertising period of the year. Not only that, but with the political and economic unrest in Egypt, we still managed to keep every single one of our 15 core clients. - 100% response rate - 44% watched videos from their mobile phones via QR codes - 23% shared their videos on social media - Retained 100% of our clients