2015 Winners & Shortlists

Brief Explanation

The launch TV commercial for a luxury “royal” ice cream sundae Al Dahabi “the golden sundae” as part of a broadcast and online campaign. The core idea was to use as a creative springboard the popularity of Poetry in the Arab world. Some of the top rated TV shows in the region are poetry competitions.(i.e. Millions Poet) For Al Dahabi we mined the tradition of Royal court poetry where poets would compete to spontaneously outdo each other with flowery descriptive verse to impress the ruler/sheikh/king. We took this tradition and subverted it by casting two currently hot hip young Saudi Online Comedians, The poetic tradition is very popular amongst Arabs. The online comedians we cast are known to be irreverent and edgy in the very conservative Saudi Arabia. The film was set up as being quite serious, but the poets then pastiche the tradition as they bumble and fail to adequately describe the indescribable; the taste of Al Dahabi. At the end of the spot we further subvert the conservative traditions of the region by having their headdress rings and beard turn gold. Normally it is unthinkable to mess with the traditional dress or the mark of masculinity, the beard.

Creative Execution

The original creative called for two good comedy actors, but the client wanted to go deeper and create more buzz and impact and sought out and secured two of the most popular online comedians in Saudi Arabia, the main Target market. Hisham Faqeeh (of “No woman no drive” fame with 13 Million you tube hits) and his sometime comedy partner Missisippi Ibrahim were chosen. Saudi Arabia is one of the most connected online places on the planet. Due to stringent cultural restrictions and TV rules and regulations, YouTube is incredibly popular. As the Clients marketing team wanted to appeal to this generation and expand their market, these two guys were great performers and perfect casting for the concept. Both of these guys have their own YouTube shows and millions of twitter followers. They added a whole new dimension and to the communication. The director and they created multiple online versions that supported the main concept. While the main executions ran on Broadcast media, they also proved super popular on you tube and the entire campaign of nine executions gathered over 2.2 million hits and lots of comment and conversation.