2016 Winners & Shortlists

ADEL SUKKAR

BrandBENCHMARK MIDDLE EAST
Product/ServiceADEL SUKKAR
EntrantBENCHMARK MIDDLE EAST Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
CategoryFiction: Series or Film
Entrant Company BENCHMARK MIDDLE EAST Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Contributing Company BENCHMARK MIDDLE EAST Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

The Campaign

‘Adel Sukkar’ was conceived in response to rising cases of diabetes, high levels of ignorance, and misunderstandings about the disease, in the Middle East. Largely uninspiring and clinical, healthcare education often presented the facts plainly, without recognition of how it could engage the wider community to assist those suffering. The challenge of ‘Adel Sukkar’ was to bridge the gap between healthcare education and entertainment, to create a healthcare awareness series that could address the issues affecting millions of Middle Easterners, and bring a creative engagement aspect to excel the field of design and animation. Part of the challenge with creating ‘Adel Sukkar’ was getting people on board with using high quality 3-D animation for a healthcare awareness issue. The market was not familiar with producing this kind of animation for social media, and the concept was new. The key objective was to bring a new means of healthcare education to the public, and provide a platform where they could discuss their struggles with diabetes in an accessible way. To ensure the public would be drawn to the ‘Adel Sukkar’ series, the strategy was to create sophisticated and personable characters, who would not only reflect people experiencing diabetes; but, that could be identified with across the Middle East, as common types of people everyone would know and love. The ‘Adel Sukkar’ episodes were launched during the fasting month of Ramadan, as a once weekly episode on YouTube. The informative entertainment would be well received at this time, because during Ramadan, diabetics and their families were unaware or lacking information on how to fast safely and in a healthy manner. ‘Adel Sukkar’ also had a Facebook page, in order to promote an online community who could discuss and share their thoughts, experiences and stories about their struggles and experiences with diabetes.

‘Adel Sukkar’ is currently the Middle East’s most popular Diabetes fighter, with a reach of over 24.5 million, across the Middle East. The series received 81,391 views on YouTube, which indicates that the videos were popular. When coupled with the response on the ‘Adel Sukkar’ community page on Facebook, it is notable that with 251,028 likes, the community has been responding to not only the ‘Adel Sukkar’ series, but also to its main healthcare messages. This success towards creating an online community for diabetics, and those affected by the disease, to talk about their issues and experiences, for better understanding, is reinforced in the numbers, as well the responses which were posted. People mentioned that the characters helped them feel able to relate to the scenarios, and that they were better able to understand how to manage their diabetes. Viewers admitted to having diabetes, explained how the episodes helped them understand their disease, and how they were able to engage with it because they could identify with the scenarios and characters. In particular, the calls for more episodes, and for the series to be shown on TV marked how well the campaign was at reaching out to its target audience.

Credits

Name Company Role
Mohamed Hammad Benchmark Middle East Chief Creative Officer
Mohamed Luay Benchmark Middle East Associate Creative Director
AbdelRahman Mohamed Benchmark Middle East Director/Art Director
Mohamed Blala Benchmark Middle East 3D Animation Supervisor
Hany El Adly Benchmark Middle East VFX- Compositing
Shimaa Abdelwahed Benchmark Middle East Associate Creative Director
Ahmed Sabrouti Benchmark Middle East Illustrator
Rima Aboulhassan Benchmark Middle East Medical Writer
Abdullah Alnour Benchmark Middle East Location Modeler
Ameena Khanum Benchmark Middle East Creative Copywriter