2015 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

Qatar is considered to be a conservative country when it comes to communications. Although the country is witnessing great progress and development in different areas, there are still a lot of cultural, religious, traditional, as well as many other restrictions. Therefore most of the communications tend to lean towards the classic advertising methods hoping to meet the brief's objectives by playing it the safe way.

Results

Qatar's leading telecom operator (Ooredoo) was preparing for its 3rd Marathon, but people needed the will and motivation to get out of their comfort zones of their inactive lifestyle, and run. So we tapped into a simple human insight that when it comes to running a marathon, the only opponent you have to beat is yourself. This opponent who constantly finds the right excuses for you to stay comfy in your unhealthy routine lifestyle. It was time to move people with No More Excuses. It was time to “Win over you”. To bring our idea to life, we dug deeper into people’s everyday behaviors and attitudes in order to identify the different excuses that stopped them from running. We created character illustrations that embodied our future runners and their excuses. Then we rolled our campaign with print ads, posters, walls, and online posts telling the stories of each of the characters with a message to ‘Win over you’ and ‘run the Ooredoo Marathon’. This was supported by a series of online 'excuse generator banners' that revealed the different excuse characters whom people could relate to with a closing message to ‘Stop looking for excuses and run the Ooredoo Marathon’. All our channels lead people to the Marathon microsite, which became people’s home where they can get acquainted with the character stories, learn different tips to prepare themselves physically and psychologically to win over their excuses and run the marathon, and eventually register for the marathon.

Latest official studies show that around 80% of people in Qatar aren't involved in any sort of physical activity. This has resulted in bad implication on the overall health of the majority of people. When we asked them "why aren't you having an active lifestyle?", everyone gave different excuses. In fact, they were just justifying to themselves the non-active lifestyle. It was a personal dilemma that we unlocked in people's mind. At least we made them re-question their lifestyle and have them consider not only be more active, but also join the MARATHON!

The campaign turned into a movement and drove local TV channels, publications and social media bloggers and influencers to adopt our cause/campaign, spread the word, and pushed for it: 'No More Excuses. It's time to win over you and run the Ooredoo Marathon2015'. This has resulted in $650,000 in earned media. Over 125,000 people visited the microsite (20% of the population) with an average time spent of 3m20s per visit. Actually, we triggered an eye-opening effect to numerous people who were giving up to their excuses and empowered them to get active and run, leading to a 255% increase in event registrations compared to previous years. Over $200,000 in registration fees went to charity, this made Ooredoo Marathon2015 one of the top fund raising events in Qatar. On the day of the event, people were relieved to share the different excuses they were able to overcome which increased the buzz and inspired the community by posting thousands of messages on social media. The campaign not only generated over 24 million social media impressions, but also strengthened the role of Ooredoo as the company that empowers individuals for a better and healthier community.