Today in Lebanon, there are thousands of intellectuals and underground artists vainly trying to showcase and share their cultural thoughts and work to the nation, the region and the world. Sadly, the audience is focused on sharing meaningless content instead bringing Lebanese Online culture to a new low.
Produced in half a day, “I Love Bananas” by Zeezee M became the most viewed YouTube video in the history of Lebanon in less than a week, with an average of 10,000 views per hour, an over 1 million views overall.
When the actress revealed the nature of the premeditated stunt, she proved to the nation that degrading online content was getting more visibility than true culture.
Simultaneously, Sa2afetna was launched, a cultural Facebook page providing users with relevant cultural content that is truly worth sharing and debating. The leading TV station has taken the pledge to shed light on true talents and support them by giving them TV and radio platforms to express their art with greater visibility.
The wake-up call was endorsed by 2 TVCs and a nationwide OOH campaign.
Online, fake scandalous banners redirected users to our cultural page.
On ground, branded cultural corners were installed in all Virgin Megastores, encouraging people to enjoy a good read and music for free.
With millions of social media impressions, thousands of Lebanese joining the page and sharing its rich content, a cultural movement was born.
The Brief
A wake-up call was much needed to put true culture back at the center of the online discussion, which would eventually extend offline, setting back the cycle to its healthy ways. Users needed to be reminded that they are the leading advocates of any cultural cause related to their country and that their opinion and support was crucial to the reviving of true Lebanese culture, or equally to its decline.
Results
The video clip was viewed 1,292,000 times in 199 countries to date. It triggered a national debate, covered by all TV stations and spurred by millions of online users.
The hashtag of the prime time TV talk show trended on the night of the reveal, an unprecedented event that proved that all eyes were on the so-called actress, and they consequently unanimously assisted to the reveal and the facebook page launch.
The campaign earned 3.2 Million dollars in free media with thousands of users liking the page that reached 20K likes within a week.
Execution
The Zeezee M video was launched from an official ZeeZee M account, started gathering views at the rate of 10,000 views per hour in a country as tiny as Lebanon. The online engagement was triggered instantly and the major breakthrough in terms of views and shares was when another leading TV station mentioned the clip on its news website to criticize the level of mediocrity the art scene had reached. After one week of ongoing interaction and debate fueled by sarcasm, admiration and hate the reveal harnessed an unprecedented viewership rate on MTV, and the cultural FB page was launched to the whole nation, capitalizing on the momentum of the big declaration. Simultaneously, 2 TVCs and an OOH campaign supported the launch, making the campaign the talk of the town, praised by multiple bloggers and journalists from various media channels in addition to the snowball effect created by online users.
The Situation
With more than 2.5 million Lebanese active online users, it goes without saying that whatever is being discussed online is a very representative reflection of the offline community and the on-ground debate, and vice versa.
After the rise and fall of multiple infamous Lebanese superstars due to the overwhelming ‘social media’ effect, true Lebanese culture is at stake more than ever, with real cultural content becoming scarce and almost invisible, as opposed to waves of idiotic and degrading content commonly shared and debated on various social media platforms.
The Strategy
Given that the problem emanated from the general public, we needed the scale of the campaign to match that audience in terms of reach and engagement. The core of the campaign came from MTV’s ability to propagate the communication across offline and online media.
We needed to a powerful attention grabber to get everyone hooked as we move forward towards the reveal.
Based on the nature of the problem, the strategy was to create a live example that would prove the deteriorating online culture and its effects on the community. What seems to be the problem is also the remedy. Hence the Zeezee M stunt launched online, that built up to the live official launch of the campaign on the most viewed entertainment talk show on Prime Time TV. The viral video would propel the cultural page at a very accelerated rate and the shock intended did the job perfectly.