2016 Winners & Shortlists

The Brief

The UAE is a country made up of 7 emirates. But most of the population doesn't know that. That's because 89 percent of them are expats. For them, the UAE is Dubai and Abu Dhabi, tall buildings, water parks, malls, more malls and golf courses. Even the very patriotic Emirati's don't venture out of the city limits much these days. So, with UAE National Day approaching, woe saw an opportunity for GMC to take people off the beaten track and show them a side of their country they've never seen before.We picked 2 Emirati's to explore the 7 emirates in a GMC Sierra.

Creative Execution

The Emirati's became the nations tour guides. The public followed their journey through weekly episodes leading up to National Day. People could choose episodes to watch by navigating a map of the UAE on a microsite. On the ground, we used Dubai International Motor Show to let people experience the road trip using Oculus Rift Virtual Reality Goggles.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

The ultimate goal of our campaign was to further strengthen the bond between Emirati's and GMC. We succeeded in many ways but the most powerful was the fact that on the UAE national day itself, #OURUAE became a trending twitter topic with "GMCARABIA" as one of the main related terms used in conversations. Overall we managed to generate $7.8 million worth of PR coverage, we reached over 4.5 million users on Facebook and on Twitter, it created 1.7 million impressions. 900k unique views on Youtube. 4.5 million users reached on Facebook. 22 million social media impressions. $7.8 million worth of media coverage. #OURUAE became a trending twitter topic on National Day.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

The campaign created 8 episodes featuring two Emirati's travelling around the country in a GMC Sierra discovering places and things to do. People travel half way around the world to visit amazing places, but for some reason when it comes to our own country, we barely make the effort to explore what's out there. With UAE National Day approaching, we saw an opportunity for GMC to take people off the beaten track and show them a side of their country they have never seen before to celebrate the richness of the Emirati culture.