2014 Winners & Shortlists

Results and Effectiveness

The campaign reached a total of 5.4 million women with a unique average reach of nearly 100,000 Women per day (Source: Facebook) The key attribute ‘is an expert in Abaya care’ increased by +8%, while sales increased by 11% vs. 2012. Category penetration and trial of Persil Abaya rose by 3% (Source: TNS) hence keeping Persil Abaya as number 1 in the liquid detergents (Source: Neilsen Retail Audit).

Creative Execution

As a response we moved our initiative into the captivating reality show format, where contestants lived under one roof and embarked into themed individual and group couture challenges mentored and critiqued by a celebrity-judging panel. We used this content as a catalyst to get women more involved in Persil’s Abaya World. Hence, in its 5th season, we took Arwa3 Abaya beyond their TV screens and into their hands, phones, social spheres and dialogue. To connect women with the content, we created a weekly Q&A program with personalized video responses allowing fans to reach out to the contestants. To reward our audience, we launched an app allowing them to win unique Abaya designs by collecting points through QR codes using Google maps. To grant them their 15 minutes of fame, we opened a crowd-sourcing initiative called ‘The Ultimate Abaya’ enabling Facebook fans to get involved in their own Abaya design. And to give them the chance to meet the contestants we threw a community competition where one lucky fan gained an all-access pass to the show.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

Persil Abaya Shampoo has been arguably the regions most successful piece of NPD, partly down to ‘Arwa3 Abaya’ – a TV series for amateur Abaya designers launched in 2009. Fast-forward to 2013 and Persil faced its biggest challenge to date, with P&G creating ‘Tide Abaya’ and supporting it with marketing budgets some 44% greater than Persil. Therefore, the challenge was twofold, first to defend the brand’s market position from Tide; and second to find innovative ways to convert indifferent category users to become Persil Abaya Shampoo advocates. After four seasons we knew that exclusivity of designs and access to the shows talent were key ingredients to success so our idea was to provide greater ‘contact’ with the series content. Our idea was to build on Arwa3 Abaya’s success and take it beyond their TV screens and into consumer’s hands, phones, social spheres and dialogue. The starting point was compelling content around Abaya design that was bigger, more dramatic, and more engaging.