2016 Winners & Shortlists

Brief Explanation

Over the past three years, nearly 2 million refugees have fled to Lebanon from violence in Syria. For displaced populations, staying connected to relatives in Syria has grown increasingly difficult and expensive, leaving many to resort to traveling up and down Lebanon’s borders to try to find a Syrian mobile signal and check on the status of their loved ones. Our insight was that Syrian refugees struggle to reconnect with their families and friends in Syria during the crisis, and lacked affordable telecommunications options with which to connect to their loved ones back home.

Results and Effectiveness

Within a period of one month, we managed to connect with over 50,000 refugees with their families. Additionally, we only spent 50% of our initial budget on the campaign and exceeded our objective by 400%. Our approach and NGO collaboration allowed us to use very precise targeting, which led to 50% saving in budget and 5 times greater than the target. Our ultimate accomplishment was the ability to connect with over 50,000 Syrian refugees to their loved ones back home, making their displacement just a little more bearable.

Creative Execution

A communications plan wasn’t easy, as we needed basic information about our audience but this data is restricted to Lebanon’s military officials and official NGOs. Our partnership with NGOs allowed us to access the camps, where a fleet of engaging promoters with the Syrian residents, provided flyers with useful information about the special package. We created five mobile trucks that were branded for the Touch Syrian Line, which followed a specially-designed route in key areas such as the rural Bekaa region. We also built a highly-targeted mix of 4x3 with static unipoles around the camps to support the activation.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

Syria’s brutal war has changed the demographics of Lebanon significantly, and the refugee crisis is in the forefront of many Lebanese minds. The primary business challenge was that refugees had little or no access to an international mobile service with a low acquisition cost. Touch saw the opportunity of combining their advanced technology and services to better connect Syrians in Lebanon with their families with deeply discounted rates on minutes and SMS compared to standard plans.