2014 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

In a time of turmoil in the Middle East, the voice of the youth is overshadowed by mainstream occupations, namely Arabic music which acts as a diversion rather than an expression. Meanwhile, Mashrou’ Leila, an independent Lebanese Band, asked us to promote their third album Raasuk (They made you dance). We selected a political track titled Lil Watan (For the Country) that discusses how we are distracted from changing the country by the mainstream conversation, and we created a video that is in itself a diversion from the lyrics, focusing on a sensual dancer.

Success of the Campaign

Almost a month after its release the video earned over 100,000 views. It has also scored 4,310 likes across YouTube and Facebook, 725 comments and over 280 shares to this date. But our reach was not limited to social media; the campaign has received an outstanding $740,000 in earned media across local and international media. Among the notable international sources are The BBC, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, and Têtu. The biggest achievement of the campaign is not just quantitative: the campaign acted as an alarm, awakening the apathetic Middle Eastern youth that is saturated by the mainstream and disappointed by an aborted Arab Spring.

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

Although music videos are the exemplary form of branded content, we made sure to engage people across the Middle East with a conversation that would spark ongoing debates about what the video represented to them. We released the video on YouTube exclusively since social media was at the very heart of the audience we wanted to reach.