2016 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

In 2014, the Launch of Stop the Shop – an anti-corruption NGO in Lebanon – was a great success. It certainly managed to rally the young energetic Lebanese dreaming of a better future for their country around the cause of corruption. For the NGO’s second year, our aim was to reach a wider audience. We wanted to create a piece of content that would touch the hearts of the masses. 2015 was the year corruption stopped being an abstract concept and started really affecting the lives of all Lebanese: as a result of corrupt policies, the waste management plan of the government turned out to be a real scam and, from a day to another, garbage stopped being collected and started filling the streets of the country. People had enough! They flooded the streets chanting slogans against the government. But soon, the movement got politicized, diverting the conversation from the garbage crisis to serving the political agenda of the master puppeteers, the corrupt political class. Stop the Shop wanted to bring the conversation back to corruption quickly before the movement loses its momentum. We partnered with the independent activist artist, Tania Saleh, known for her integrity and for always carrying messages of politics and humanity in her songs, used footage from the demonstrations and from our previous campaigns and created a song and its video clip in just a few hours. The song quickly became a driving force for the protesters, taking back the street protest away from the grasp of the corrupt political class and focusing the movement once again against their corrupt policies.

The clip was posted on Sakker el Dekkene page. Instantly, the song was widely shared online by demonstrators, influencers, artists and the public at large, confirming their endorsement to Stop the Shop’s cause, totaling over 1 Million impressions and garnering more than 300.000 views and 2,223 shares. But the most impressive results were on the ground as the song conquered the streets. The song was played at every meeting occasion. Activists started using it as their own chant. The song even made it to the demonstrations that expats were holding in cities all over the world. Most importantly, the song became the anthem of the entire movement. And then, Mainstream media picked it up. Tania Saleh and Stop the Shop’s team were invited to the top TV shows. The two biggest channels in the country, started playing the video clip 20 to 40 times a day, and ensured live coverage of the protest with the song playing in the background during the entire period of the protests. Coverage reached the phenomenal figure of $8,578,136 earned media, focusing the conversation on the real issue - corruption- and bringing back this delicate and crucial topic at the forefront of the public debate.