2015 Winners & Shortlists

The Brief

Ooredoo (the leading telecom operator in Qatar) is organizing the Ooredoo Marathon for the third year. But the latest official studies show that around 80% of people in Qatar don't involve in any sort of physical activity. This has resulted in bad implication on the overall health of the majority of people. When we asked them "why aren't you having an active lifestyle?", everyone gave different excuses. In fact, they were just justifying to themselves the non-active lifestyle. If people don’t do simple workouts, how can we make them run a MARATHON!

Describe how the promotion developed from concept to implementation

We tapped into a simple human insight that when it comes to running a marathon, the only opponent you have to beat is yourself; it’s the opponent who constantly finds the right excuses for you to stay comfy in your unhealthy routine lifestyle. It was time to leave all excuses behind and “Win over you”.

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

• Local TV channels, publications and social media bloggers adopted our cause/campaign. • People used our characters on their social media profiles. • $650,000 in earned media. • Over 125,000 people visited the microsite (20% of the population). • Registrations increased by 255% compared to previous year. • Over $200,000 in registration fees went to charity (becoming one of the top fund raising events in Qatar). • Over 24 million social media impressions. • At the event, people shared thousands of messages on social media expressing how they overcame their excuses. • The campaign strengthened the role of Ooredoo as the company that empowers individuals for a better and healthier community.

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

We dug deeper into people’s everyday behaviors to identify the excuses that stopped them from running. We created character illustrations embodying our future runners and their excuses. Then we started with printads, posters, walls, and online posts telling the stories of the different characters. Moreover, we used online 'excuse generator banners' to reveal the different excuse characters whom people could relate to with closing message ‘Stop looking for excuses. Run Ooredoo Marathon’. All channels lead people to the microsite where they got acquainted with the character stories, learned tips to prepare themselves physically and psychologically to win over themselves, and registered for the marathon.