2015 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

The region has a huge issue in content production in general. The issue is so serious that it is thought that the region's growing knowledge gap and continuing brain drain challenge its development prospects. For example, Arab countries' output of books represents just 1.1 per cent of the world total (with religious books constituting over 15 per cent of this). Five times as many books are translated into Greek (spoken by just 11 million) as Arabic. On Digital, according to various estimates, less than 1% of total global online content is in Arabic and less than 0.2% of global digital content is hosted in the Middle East and North Africa, although native Arabic speakers represent about 4.5% of the world population. Over 60% of Arabic speakers prefer browsing internet content in Arabic according to Arab Media Outlook 2009-2013. More than half of them do not speak English. The lack of original content and the infrastructures to produce is challenging for any brand that wants to brand it let alone find relevant content for products only available in the region. In summary, branding content outside of TV is a big challenge, brands need to develop the content first.

Results

California Garden is the leader in the canned foul category with 60% market share. Foul, an unremarkable weekend breakfast food for most Arabs, had been often relegated to the back of kitchen shelves. So how do you grow sales? The answer was in growing the entire category by changing an age-old perception and turning foul into the latest trend in town. Foul has all the benefits of other beans, but we had to unearth the one thing that made it special. So, we put on our lab coats and EUREKA! We discovered foul was the only edible source of L-Dopa, an amino acid that accelerates the production of human growth hormone (HGH). In other words, our fountain of youth was sitting right in our very own kitchen. Our strategy was there: Break the story and watch our sales soar! For credibility and impact we needed the right partner We partnered with Yahoo!, the region’s leading consumer portal. We used their influencers to develop unbranded native content that would intrigue and educate consumers about the benefits of foul and why nutritionists were touting it as the next big super food. The content was a mix of 96 informational pieces ranging from articles, galleries, infographics and videos from credentialed dieticians and nutritionists. We released it building the superfood story and leading up to the benefits of HGH in muscle & bone development, skin & brain cell rejuvenation Athletes were drawn to the content related to performance and muscle growth. Women enjoyed the content related to beauty and improved skin tone. And parents were keen to read content related to child development. Suddenly, we opened the market to three new segments and broke out of the ‘weekend family breakfast’ only consumption pattern. Soon, foul became the super food that captivated everyone, every day.

96 pieces of content were produced ranging from infographics, to articles and videos with over 90% of the content being in Arabic. - Average time spent per content piece is 1min 07sec - Interaction on content shared on facebook averaged 350 likes per post and 27 shares per post, significantly higher than any other yahoo content - Average time spent on the Yahoo foul section is 18% longer than the site’s average time spent

Our native content strategy worked! We managed to change an old perception of foul being an unremarkable breakfast to a trendy topic prompting consumers to rediscover this wholesome food. A pre and post campaign research indicates: o Our content received more than 10MM page views from over 1MM unique users o California Garden sales grew by 10% o Brand awareness increased from 89% to 91% o Consumption of fava beans more than once a week increased by 20% o 100% of respondents understood that fava beans are rich in essential nutrients o Respondents understanding that fava beans are rich in minerals increased by 171% o The perception that fava beans are a ‘wholesome nutritious food’ increased by 66%, ‘good source of energy’ by 63% and ‘enhance the healthy growth of the whole family’ increased by 41% All of this in just six months!