2015 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

As Arabs, expectations dominate our everyday lives. From the careers we’re expected to follow, the people our parents want us to marry, down to our formal habits among elders. These are all pressures we face, which creates extreme tension that we keep bottled up, afraid to express our true feelings as it’s considered taboo. And during the month of Ramadan, when things are supposed to get better, brands put even more pressure on us with Ads that either paint a fake, happy picture of our lives, or they tell us to be kinder people which we are anyway in Ramadan, making things worse. Coca-Cola faced the risk of falling into this trap. So we decided to go the root of our tension: our inability to tell each other how we really feel. We invited our audience to OpenUp. To speak the unspoken and have a real connection with loved ones.

Success of the Campaign

Our integrated campaign instantly touched the hearts of the Arab world. In just one week, our Online Films alone received 1 million views with over 580,000 likes, comments, shares, retweets. By the last week of Ramadan, our campaign reached more than 25 million people across the region, gaining over 11 million Social Media impressions with our campaign hashtag (#OpenUp) established as an outlet of expression for our audience. And the region appreciated finally being understood by a major brand, increasing their Love for the Brand by 42% (the highest Coca-Cola ever achieved in MENA and its most important global metric). In the end, we never set out to change the Arab world, we just wanted to pave the way for stronger, more meaningful connections with the people we love. Giving Arabs the chance to say things, they’ve never been able to say.

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

We first wanted to let our audience know that it is ok to break the norm, so we launched our campaign with inspiring TV ads we aired openly, featuring situations deeply relatable to all Arabs. To prove that it is possible to overcome our tensions, we then identified and reached out to leading Arab influencers who were struggling with their own inability to Open Up. We interviewed them up-close and personal, digging deep beyond the outer layers of their celebrity persona to uncover internal family struggles of their own. We resolved their tensions for the first time, surprising millions of their followers and inspiring them to have the same courage. We turned their candid stories into Online Films, establishing our campaign hashtag (#OpenUp) as an outlet of expression on Social Media. We then gave people the chance to share heartfelt messages with others through Mall Activations, strengthening their family connections.