2015 Winners & Shortlists

Results and Effectiveness

The ad used the best that the cinema space could offer: an alert, attentive, young, Emirati audience and the perfect situation for the unexpected. The announcement was not only intensely listened to because of its surprise and location, but instigated our audience into action. The cinema execution yielded a 34% reach of our total target audience on-ground. Online we achieved a reach of 46%, with almost 654,000 unique visitors to the Cadet Recruitment webpage, 10,160 interactions and a CTR of 0.76% which was higher than the industry benchmark of 0.08% - 0.1%.

Creative Execution

The ad mirrored a pilot making an interruptive screen announcement just as they would in air. Airing before the film, the disruptive ad broadcast to our audience that the Emirates Cadet Program was recruiting. The ad’s communication style ensured that the message was directed towards young Emiratis. Cinema was identified as the optimal media to create high impact in an unrivalled ad viewing environment and drawing in a high footfall from our audience during our campaign period. During implementation we faced several hurdles, primarily that the ad’s format could not be played during paid advertisements. We negotiated with the cinema media vendors to air it during their pre-film branding commercial and VOX Cinemas were happy to accept this execution. This was to our benefit, being our cinema of choice, as they receive the most Emirati customers, have a wide cinema network, and we had their full support.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

For Emirates’ Cadet Recruitment Program it has been extremely difficult to enrol young Emiratis leaving university due to the intensive nature of the field. Our challenge was to show the Program as a truly viable career option for all Emiratis, male and female, something interesting and exciting, with the opportunity to work for a reputable home-grown brand which has led their country’s success story. Being the summer holidays, a strategy was devised to target them during their leisure time. It had to grab their attention and inspire them to enroll. So a special-execution was created for the best environment in which to surprise our audience into action – the cinema. We imagined our captive and anticipatory cinema audience – watching adverts, waiting for their film and perhaps not giving their full attention to what’s happening on screen. But where is the one place you really do pay attention? 35,000 feet.