2015 Winners & Shortlists

ONLY THE LONELY

Short List
BrandVOLVO
Product/ServiceAUTOMOTIVE
EntrantINTERESTING TIMES Beirut, LEBANON
CategoryBranded Tech (offline)
Entrant Company INTERESTING TIMES Beirut, LEBANON
Advertising Agency INTERESTING TIMES Beirut, LEBANON
Production Company RUMBLE London, UNITED KINGDOM

Creative Execution

The activation required people to take a stand by using our interactive installations throughout the city. The experiments were based on performing simple actions, which are uncommon in Beirut: hailing a cab from a taxi stand safely or using a zebra crossing with an LED-light alert to vehicles. The stands were Internet-enabled, equipped with cameras to capture interaction and completely solar powered. Once a button was pressed to performed the desired action, the campaign’s theme song played from internal speakers and the camera began filmed a social-media friendly 15-second clip that was pushed directly to our website for sharing!

Bloggers and news outlets praised the initiative and called for countrywide implementation. Lebanese NGO “Live-Love-Beirut” used the campaign as a public petition to change people’s behavior and celebrities took part. OnlyTheLonely.me generated 113,142 sessions and 72,432 users. 29.8% of the traffic came from referrals, while 22% came directly. Paid leads accounted for 41.4% of visits. More than 1,700 videos were shared from the stands, reaching 137,083 English language Facebook users (12% of the English language target demographic). 4,390 pedestrians used the stands. And most importantly, showroom traffic not only increased by 10-fold, but maintained its growth after the campaign’s completion.

The average consumer in Lebanon views Volvo as “old” and “boring”. Additionally, German makes dominate 80% of the market. Volvo wanted to position itself as the car for the 'thinking society’, for those who don’t follow the herd, and are confident enough to plow their own path. To bring this concept to life we looked at the broader social context. Lebanon is a country where doing things the wrong way (especially on the road) is the norm and those who do things the right way are the minority–a lonely minority. We developed Project “Only The Lonely” as a social experiment that set out to find just how many “lonesome” Lebanese there were. Campaign touch points urged people who could relate to visit OnlytheLonely.me and join the movement. The microsite mapped out our interactive installations across the city where users could make their stand simply by doing the right thing.

Credits

Name Company Role
Rita Harbie Interesting Times Copywriter
Elie Chbib Interesting Times Production Manager
Jihad Harmoush Interesting Times Engagement Manager
Michiel Sfeir Art Director
Lara Safar Interesting Times Head Of Engagement
Bahaa Awad Interesting Times Digital Production Director
Jimmy Francis Interesting Times Creative Director/Partner
Ashraf Mansour Interesting Times Strategy Director/Partner
Wassim Bassil Interesting Times Managing Partner
Mo Alghossain Interesting Times Creative Director/Partner
Karam Al Ghossain Interesting Times Senior Content Producer
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