2016 Winners & Shortlists

Creative Execution

To launch we took-over DCF social media channels and promoted Snapchat on DTCM entities, offering the chance to win tickets for following - and quickly built a audience. Then, we engaged them with hilarious Snapchat Stories counting down to the ticket sales. Next we launched our on-ground in-festival Snapchat stream. Our Social Media Ninjas took up residence on site to run activations including games and competitions (using Snapchat's unique screen-shotting function), showcased behind-the-scenes exclusives, and ran takeovers including Bader Salah, Saudi comedian/influencer. This was intermingled with live coverage from world renowned names like Dave Chappelle, Hannibal Buress, and Trevor Noah.

From pre-launch to ticket sales to on-ground to competitions to live broadcasts, Snapchat was integral to the success of the festival. Our activations sparked huge peaks in engagement, including a 3000% increase from the Bader Salah takeover. In total we produced around 200 pieces of content across various Snapchat stories and generated quarter of a million organic views. We brought people closer the the action and the action closer to people, and proved Snapchat to be the perfect platform to promote the inaugural event.

October 2015 saw the first ever Dubai Comedy Festival bring international and local comedians together for 10 days of side splitting shows. 1000heads were challenged to launch the festival in a new, fresh and original way. With its key millennial audience (71% of users are under 25) and rocketing popularity in the region helping push it over 100m daily users, we identified Snapchat as the perfect launch vehicle - the first time it has ever been the lead marketing platform for a major Dubai event. Spontaneity, creativity, imagination and humour are all integral to the Snapchat experience and they aligned perfectly with the festival itself. The mobile-first nature of the platform allowed us to be on site and real-time; and that took us where the people are, with an estimated 80% of web traffic in the region coming from mobile.