2014 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

The ceramic tiles industry in Egypt has always been rigid and lifeless when it came to communication. Most brands were communicating through highly functional ads full of product shots, turning it into a pure commodity market. Gloria Ceramics, wanted to bring life into this lifeless market and inspire the ceramic buyers. We started with a simple observation that design is in everything around us. From the intricate weavings of a persian rug, to a simple flower vase at home, from avant guard fashion to a colourful cupcake, from a classic Jaguar to the simple decorations of the street vendors’ ice-cream cart. This led us to conclude that design isn’t exclusive to professional Designers. It is for everyone.

Success of the Campaign

People joined in on the conversation and “You are the designer” became the subject of conversation on all social platforms. Both "Gloria" and "You are the Designer" became popular hashtags in social media. For the first time in Egypt ceramic buyers started asking for a specific brand and Gloria made a leap in de-commoditizing the Egyptian ceramic market.

Describe how the campaign/entry was launched and executed across each channel in the order of implementation.

With the rise of Instagram in Egypt, we turned to the photo app to prove our theory. We sent direct messages to Instagram users whose brilliant pictures inspired us, asking them for permission to recreate their shots in Gloria's TV ad. We were met with many approvals. When the ad was released on TV and youtube, participants started identifying their pictures and started sharing the video, and marking on youtube the second their shot appeared. We then contacted 6 of the participants who's work got the most buzz and and we did a photoshoot of their portraits recognising them as designers in a national billboard campaign. We didn't stop there ,the billboards invited more designers to Pinterest, where we asked our fans to pin more inspiring pictures. All we did was edit these pictures into a new ad to once again prove that “You are the designer”.