2014 Winners & Shortlists

The Brief

Red Bull SoundClash is a live musical experience that brings two bands with different styles together under one roof to battle for the devotion of a room full of fans. This unique concert was set to take place for the very first time in Beirut a day after Lebanon's Independence, and would feature two of the country's most prominent bands, with two very different musical styles. The brief was to create hype around the SoundClash concept and create a campaign that would not only drive attendance to the concert, but make people feel united through a once-in-a-life-time musical experience.

Describe how the promotion developed from concept to implementation

The idea was to hype up the fans of two of the countries most prominent alternative bands WHO-KILLED-BRUCE-LEE (performs in English) and MASHROU LEILA (performs in Arabic) making fans think the two bands were holding different concerts on the exact same night. The campaign launched on the walls of Beirut with a fake poster war, where each band was plastering their own posters above the other's for 10days. The plastered posters soon began to spell out WHO KILLED MASHROU LEILA, only to later reveal over all the plastered posters with one giant poster that both concerts were Red Bull SoundClash.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

Over 2700 fans, with 2 completely different musical tastes, were united under one roof on the Lebanese Independence at the RED BULL SOUNDCLASH 2013 in Beirut. That's over 700 more fans than the maximum expected attendance to the event. The guerrilla campaign created big talk across various social platforms, stirring up conversations, and reaching over 106,000 people on Twitter, and over 707,000 people on Facebook. Which evidently means the campaign was picked up by numerous blogs and various news sources, with unpaid featured articles in almost every local news paper. And, 2580cans of Red Bull were consumed at the event.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

In a divided country constantly struggling through heightened political tension, the walls of the capital Beirut have long been plastered with mostly posters of politicians and rival political parties. In order to promote the unique musical experience that is RedBull SoundClash we thought to ride on the notorious poster wars that take over the city walls, and create a guerrilla style campaign that fuels the fans of each of the bands against each other. We wanted the fans to first think the two bands were clashing, but to later discover that this is a unique and exciting collaboration.