2014 Winners & Shortlists

Results and Effectiveness

97 test drive registrations in the month long campaign at 45% click through rate spending 8 minutes on registration page. The total test drives was 21% higher than Al-Tayer’s average accounting for an impressive 9.7% of all test drives in 2013. The potential sales value of registrations was $2.22m at a campaign cost of only $5,713! The campaign achieved the lowest cost per online lead in Al-Tayer group’s history at 20% lower cost. The campaign garnered industry wide recognition and featured as one of the top media campaigns in MENA in the two main industry trades titles Communicate and Campaign.

Creative Execution

The Be Smart campaign successfully integrated Print and Mobile. A bespoke advert was placed in the popular Sports magazine ‘Life beyond Sport’ which had the famous footballer Lionel Messi on the cover of the issue. The football association worked in the execution’s favor with Ford’s unique SMART foot-operated boot feature. The advert incorporated a die-cut of a smartphone that acted as a bookmark for the print ad featured the tagline: “Got your hands full? Think on your feet” to attract the reader’s interest, inviting them to download an app and then point their smartphone cameras at the execution. With the app downloaded, the reader could watch the TVC and then was immediately prompted to register for a test drive online.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

The Be Smart campaign’s main objective was to increase sales of Ford’s newly launched 2013 Escape model in the UAE by increasing the number of test drive registrations. The key car feature showcased in the campaign was Ford’s unique SMART foot-operated boot feature. The target audience was 25-34 male technology enthusiasts. The main challenge lay in how to convert awareness amongst this savvy audience to test drive registrations on a limited budget. The key insight lay in the fact that our audience loves anything to do with mobiles. The UAE has the highest smartphone penetration globally (73.8% of the population) and based on the latest research conducted in the UAE by Google, mobile app usage is now ubiquitous, with 23 apps downloaded on average per month per user. The campaign idea that emerged based on this insight successfully married Ford’s smart technology with smart phone application technology.