2015 Winners & Shortlists

The Brief

In recent years, Egypt had replaced a 200-year tradition of doorstep garbage collectors with big corporate collection agencies, which resulted in a street littering disaster. Because old traditional garbage men had been running their own home-grown recycling system that was unknown to the public until recently, when the new agencies took their garbage to landfills, a clear conflict of interest arose, and garbage got badly mishandled in the streets. With Egypt still abide by pre-revolution contracts with the collecting companies. Our solution was to bring back the good old doorstep collectors to stop garbage from reaching the street, and recycle.

Describe how the promotion developed from concept to implementation

We created a band, made garbage-recycled instruments, and celebrated the proposed solution next to an art-directed garbage pile in the streets. Egyptians who hadn’t known what recycling meant, nor linked street littering to garbage they threw out there in the new impractical system, got engaged into the entertaining events that were later made into TV spots for the rest of Egyptians to watch. They lovingly welcomed the idea of doorstep collecting back, in exchange for their sorting their waste.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

Egyptians were now collaborating to bring back the only true form of recycling so far in Egypt. They were singing our lyrics, praising it on social media as quantum leap in the world of governmental public awareness campaigns, interviews on TV shows were held to further explain the new/old, street clearing/recycling system. Neighborhoods were inquiring about how soon the system will reach their areas.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

To a population that had zero knowledge of the worth of their garbage, and are used to disengaging governmental advertising that preached problems in a boring ambiguous and ineffective TV spots; Looking at live beautiful garbage-recycled instruments, and listening to a simple proposed solution sung with it, brought the idea of recycle clearer to their minds. We proved garbage is recyclable, and removable from streets.