2016 Winners & Shortlists

Brief Explanation

Splash is Middle East’s largest fashion retailer and part of the Landmark Group, one of the biggest retail conglomerates in the Middle East, India and Africa. Founded in 1993 as a single brand store in Sharjah, Splash has grown to over 220 stores and 55 brand stores across 14 countries. Showcasing popular collections for men, women and teens, Splash’s existing product portfolio includes a uni-brand concept across its stores providing a comfortable and easy shopping environment. Alongside, the brand also houses a gamut of international brands under its portfolio like Lee Cooper, Bossini, ELLE and Being Human among others.

The Brief

The purpose of the calendar is to build the brand’s equity and create a Calendar that is not just an ordinary calendar. The brief was to create something of practical use yet be a piece that someone would cherish purely for its design aesthetic. This does not just cater to the creative sensibilities of our stakeholders, media and partners but also something that will appeal to our consumers .Given the theme, the goal of the Calendar is to take the fashion route to help raise awareness towards challenges the modern society faces like poverty, hunger, pollution to state a few.

How the final design was conceived

It is known that the world leaders got together to discuss pressing issues that the society has been facing and have formulated a 17-point plan to end poverty, halt climate change and fight injustice and inequality. Splash took inspiration from this and chose 12 such topical challenges to highlight through this calendar through the path of surrealism. Every month is dedicated to a challenge we have to come together to help eradicate. Lavish sets and props add to the surrealistic approach to bring this calendar to life. The aim was to represent each challenge in the simplest yet impactful manner by combining reality with a touch of surrealism. The image for Peace which is a powerful image of a woman in a flowing camouflage dress with pigeons flying out states that a single act of peace is more powerful than a million wars. Clean Water emphasizes the importance of our basic right to clean water which is far more priceless than the luxuries in life as the model can be seen vacuuming a cloud to derive pure water. The entire process was done in a dramatic manner to create images that will make people stop and take notice.

Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market

This time around we created multiple options for the calendar that would cater to different requirements of the consumer. We printed 2 variants of desktop planners -calendar and also designed desktop versions.The calendar every year is well received by the industry and especially by our customers who can get a desktop version of the same on purchase at the store and so far almost 200,000 copies have been given out. The calendar is an outlet for the brand to showcase its creativity and a way to express and interpret fashion in its own terms yet adhering to the standards set by the industry. Splash witnessed an increase in sales during this period as well. On the Social Media front an App was created that allowed users to download the same to use as an online planner, which reached 100,000 users. The launch was highly driven through PR activities which also involved Behind-the-Scenes exclusive with magazines like Friday- Gulf News and post launch which resulted in coverage worth AED 5 million till date.