2016 Winners & Shortlists

Brief Explanation

DISH is an American based company in the U.S.A that provides satellite TV and carries over 50 of the most demanded Arabic channels. The brief was to rebuild affinity with its Arabic client base and consequently increase subscriptions. Our main audiences are first generation Arab-Americans who most of them are parents. They are integrated in the US yet still strongly hold on to their Arab identities, however they struggle to connect with their offspring over their heritage. We created an online piece of entertainment; an Arabic rap battle entitled ‘I SAY ARABI’ between an old cliché Arab father and his all-American offspring. We also created direct email shots as well as direct mailers and POSM branding rolled out in several key markets.

Creative Execution

Creating a benefit driven ad would not have caught the attention of existing/potential customers. We created a piece of entertainment that would bridge the cultural/generational gaps from which Arab-Americans suffer. The ‘ISAYARABI’ music-clip was an overnight-success on YouTube/Facebook reaching our audiences in the US and Arab-world. We created pre-rolls, online-videos, and email-shots with strong calls-to-action that put in-situation the same insight branded the ‘Arabi Deal’. The clip went viral instantly, paid support didn’t come until 4 days after the release. The campaign was supposed to run from November’15 until February’16 but timeline has-been adapted to carry on until end April’16.

Results

Our campaign went viral, reaching 4.3M views, uncommon for Arabic piece-of-content. Engagement on social media blewup; the ‘I SAY ARABI’ video gathered 56k likes, 14k comments and 64k shares. Initial social-media KPIs were surpassed with 72% and 461% fan increase on Facebook and YouTube respectively. Everyone rushed to DISH’s website resulting in 75% and 44% increase in Arabic landing-page visitors and daily landing page visits respectively. Path-to-purchase results were as impressive with 200% increase in average daily-calls from Dish’s-Arabic website and 74% increase in daily-searches for branded-items. Client expectations was exceeded with 16% lift from projections on launchday for Arabic-calls.