2016 Winners & Shortlists

Brief Explanation

All children think about their future. But, 73% of parents in the UAE haven’t had a conversation with their children about that future. (Source: Truth About Families, 2014) To promote the new children’s savings plans for Emirates NBD, Middle East’s leading bank, and attract affluent parents, we started that conversation. With “Hey Future Me…”, we asked children, across schools, to send a message to their future selves. And as the children spoke about what they really think about when it comes to the future, their parents watched. The project’s video became a highly shared film earning $360,000 in media value. Clicks from the film led to high engagement on the website for children’s savings plans with the average time-spent being nearly 40% above the regional benchmark of 10 minutes.* We increased acquisitions for children’s savings plans by 20% (10% over the targets of 10% from any promotional campaign) and generated over 1750 leads through the website vs. the target of 1000 leads.* We also generated positive endorsements from leading educational institutions: “At HCT, we always follow a learning-by-doing approach in our classes to give students a chance to apply what they learn in real life situations. Hey Future Me… was inspiring and helped facilitate that kind of environment. We used the video to introduce an in-class project for level 2 students.” (Sebah Al-Ali, Higher Colleges of Technology, UAE) Due to its social impact, the idea attracted more than 30 leading school networks as partners, thus extend Emirates NBD’s retail distribution network to a new channel (i.e. schools) for its children’s plans; and for products like Retirement Plans and Life Insurance.* Student engagement programs, such as ‘Banker for a Day’ were enhanced by Emirates NBD getting students share ideas for the future of banking. It won multiple regional and international awards for creativity and effectiveness: Gold Effie for Banking, Finance & Insurance, Grand Prix in Direct at Dubai Lynx, Gold at the Warc Prize for Connections Strategy, Gold at the International Business Excellence Awards and 2 Gold Midas Awards. It has also contributed to Emirates NBD being named the Dubai Lynx 2016 Advertiser of the Year.* The idea is also under development as a project for the UAE Ministry of Education for the 2016-2017 academic year. *(Sources: Emirates NBD Website Performance Monitoring Reports, Priority Banking - Business Reports, Emirates NBD Media Monitoring Reports, Effie MENA, Dubai Lynx, Warc, IBX, Midas)