2015 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

The average consumer in Lebanon views Volvo as “old” and “boring”. Additionally, German makes dominate 80% of the market. Volvo wanted to position itself as the car for the 'thinking society’, for those who don’t follow the herd, and are confident to plow their own path. To bring this concept to life, we took a look at the broader social context. Lebanon is a country where doing things the wrong way is the norm and those who do things the right way are the minority; a lonely minority. We developed Project “Only The Lonely” as a social experiment that set out to find just how many “lonesome” Lebanese there were. Campaign touch points urged people who felt ostracized to visit OnlytheLonely.me and join the movement. The microsite mapped out our interactive installations across the city where users could take a stand simply by doing the street-wise thing.

Success of the Campaign

The campaign quickly spread on several different mediums. Bloggers and local news outlets immediately jumped on board to praise the initiative and even asked for countrywide implementation. Well-known Lebanese NGO “Live, Love, Beirut” even used the campaign as a public petition to change people’s behavior. Local celebrities used the stand to generate content. OnlyTheLonely.Me generated a total of 113,142 sessions and 72,432 users. 29.8% of the traffic came from referrals, while 22% came directly. Paid leads accounted for 41.4% of total visits. Over 4,390 pedestrians used the stands. More than 1,700 videos were shared from the campaign, reaching 137,083 English language Facebook users (12% of the English language target demographic). Our experiment’s results film went truly viral, resulting in 3,246 likes, 118 comments & 769 shares in its first 3 days. Most importantly, showroom traffic not only increased by 10-fold, but maintained its growth after the campaigns completion.

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

The campaign began with TV spots and digital communication that reflected the comical realities of day-to-day life in Lebanon and showcased our hero making a stand by simply the right thing. The end-shot drove users to the microsite and invited them join the experiment. The experiment was based on performing simple actions that are monumental tasks in Lebanon. Users could make a stand by hailing cabs, using an actual taxi stand or crossing a street safely using zebra crossing. The stands had working Internet connection, cameras to capture people’s behavior and, solar panels to reduce our carbon footprint. Once people pressed a button to perform an action, the campaign’s “Mr. Lonely” song would play from the stands speakers and the camera would begin filming the user. This content was pushed to our website where it was shared across the Internet!