2015 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

In the Arab world, expectations dominate our everyday lives. From the careers we’re expected to follow, the people our parents want us to marry, down to our formal behavior at home. These are all pressures we face, which creates extreme tension that we keep bottled up, afraid to express our true feelings as it’s considered taboo in society. During the month of Ramadan, when things are supposed to get better, brands put even more pressure on us with Ads that paint a fake, happy picture of our lives or they tell us to be kinder people – which we are anyway in Ramadan - making things worse. Coca-Cola faced the risk of falling into this trap. We decided to go the root of our tension: our inability to tell each other how we really feel. So we invited our audience to Open Up. To speak the unspoken and have a real connection with our families. We launched our campaign by reaching out to two leading influencers who were struggling with their own inability to #OpenUp - Instagram sensation ‘Ascia AKF’ from Kuwait and MENA Top Chef ‘Badr Fayez‘ from Saudi. We interviewed them up-close and personal, digging deep beyond the outer layers of their celebrity persona to uncover internal family struggles of their own. We resolved their issues for the first time, proving to our audience that our tensions can be overcome. We turned their stories into Films we shared across Social Media, inspiring millions to have the same courage.

The Brief

Our goal was two-fold: 1. Enable Coca-Cola to genuinely connect with its audiences, driving positive brand preference. 2. Inspire our audiences to have the same courage as leading influencers to “Open Up” to their families too.

Results

On the first day, Ascia received 22,000 Post Likes and 3,000 comments on her Instagram Video. In one week, our films received 1 million views with over 580,000 likes, comments, shares, retweets. By the last week of Ramadan, we reached 25 million people regionally with over 11 million Social Media impressions. The influencers were even featured in Haya Magazine. Our audience appreciated being finally understood, increasing their Brand Love by 42%, the highest Coca-Cola ever achieved across MENA and its most important global metric. We never set out to change the Arab world, we just wanted to pave the way for stronger connections with the people we love.

Execution

· We conducted influencer research and outreach to find two perfect individuals for the campaign and built trusting relationships with them. · We held two video shoots, in the homes of Ascia in Kuwait and Chef Badr in Saudi Arabia. · We produced and edited two 3-minute Online Video made for Social Media that would engage our audience in a conversation via #OpenUp. · We set up interviews between Haya (the region’s leading Pan-Arab lifestyle magazine) and the influencers, which resulted in feature stories about Ascia and Chef Badr’s “Open Up” experience. · We created custom graphics and dynamic visual elements at each of the shoots, that we compiled into a story-arc of content shared on global Coca-Cola social channels. · The two videos were circulated on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, & Instagram. We provided all materials to the influencers for them to share the content on their own Social channels, reinforcing the authenticity behind our campaign.

The Situation

Influencer relationship management is an immature practice in the Middle East. Despite the abundance of bloggers - strategic, engaging or ethical influencer programs are rare. Often times, bloggers are paid to collaborate with brands, leading to staged content that doesn’t come from the heart. With our Coca-Cola #OpenUp Campaign, we wanted to work with leading influencers to co-create stories that not only integrated the brand’s core values into our Social Media platforms seamlessly, but stories that featured real-life tensions faced by Arabs (which no other regional FMCG brand was addressing). Tensions derived from societal expectations and inability to speak openly.

The Strategy

Through an in-depth exploration of influencers in our three niche markets (Saudi, Kuwait and Iraq), we found two people that fit our campaign message perfectly. Following our initial highly-personalized outreach, we quickly attained their trust in our ability to tell their story authentically. As a result, they were willing to partner with us without payment (one of the influencers typically charges brands $100,000 minimum for any sort of engagement). In exchange, these influencers not only physically let us into their homes and willingly promoted the campaign on their own prolific Social Media channels, but more importantly, they allowed Coca-Cola direct access to their personal family life and issues. Creating a value exchange that was powerful for our campaign.