2015 Winners & Shortlists

The Brief

A nation’s biggest failure is when it forgets what it’s capable of. In 2014, media outlets competed to paint a dark vision of the future. The people followed suit. The Lebanese were forgetting what they’re truly capable of, and we made it our mission to remind them. We wanted to re-ignite a palpable sense of hope in the everyday conversation of the country by giving the Lebanese a platform to express themselves. Through the usage of #keepwalkinglebanon we rewarded crowed sourced messages of hope by transforming them into art pieces, tagging their authors and fueling the conversation in real time.

Creative Execution

In the midst of an oversaturation of negative comments, tragic political news reposts, dim outlooks occupying the timelines of Lebanese Facebook and Twitter communities, we wanted to use people as ambassadors of hope by shifting the conversations from despair to optimism. We set up a digital ecosystem online, with Facebook as a core platform for expression, where we used people as media and flooded the digital space with hope messages. Johnnie Walker is more than just a whisky; the entire brand symbolizes progress and determination. None other than all the Lebanese, in 2014, were better suited to bring the KeepWalkingLebanon mantra to life.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

We created a social media activation, at the image of the campaign and brand, allowing for people to submit their messages of hope, as well as view a repository of messages that were turned into art pieces. The activation aggregated the #KeepWalkingLebanon from Instagram and Twitter messages while we notified through direct response/notification users across all platforms. The selected messages were transformed into art pieces in real time and were formatted in ways that they could be used as branding (i.e cover photo) on the various social channels further exposing the statements of hope to larger audiences.

Results

38,400,000 impressions 306,022 Total Video Views $766,000 in earned media Over 2,500 user messages of hope. Hundreds transformed into campaign visuals used across media. On January 1st, Lebanon’s main TV talk show dedicated an entire episode to the brand, with its content articulated around 5 campaign visuals. 4 publications dedicated their editorials to hope. In a saturated market (source AC Nielsen): JW market share (Nov/Dec 2014), from leader position, grew by 19.99% vs. last year’s 2,2% growth, +6.54 ppts ahead of category Black label: value share grew 31%, 10ppt faster than category Red label volume share grew by 4%