2018 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

We selected the band Imagine Dragons as the ideal artists for our collaboration, who had mass global appeal, shared values and an interest in the city of Dubai. We developed ‘Location Placement’, where the city of Dubai was the backdrop for the band’s new single ‘Thunder’, showcasing the city in a creative and authentic way. The ‘Thunder’ music video was directed by one of the most recognised directors in the music industry, which ensured the content not only stood out for its sound, but in its creativity, effects and tone. We leveraged the band as key influencers, capturing exclusive behind the scenes content as well as organic branded content of the Imagine Dragons enjoying Dubai. The content showed the band doing a variety of activities that holiday goers could do there if they visited, to portray Dubai as a travel destination for our global audience.

Creative Execution

• Implementation of strategy All content was released without DCTCM (client) branding, by the band on their own channels, to their mass follower base. This allowed the band’s core fans to first engage with, share and promote the content and their friends to then further extend the reach through powerful peer to peer engagement. • Timeline 11/2016: campaign ideation, planning and strategy 02/2017: Imagine Dragons contract finalised and signed 03/2017: Music video, behind the scenes and branded content filmed. Band teaser photo posts from the shoot 05/2017: official music video released 06/2017: celebratory posts from the band about music video 07/2017 (1 week later): branded content posted by band • Placement Music video was hosted on the bands official YouTube (VEVO) channel Branded Content and Behind the Scenes Content was posted natively by the band across their owned social media channels • Scale Global

Approaching this campaign in a different way to traditional advertising, with content and native placement at the core, we were able to reach a mass audience we couldn't afford to reach in a traditional sense. We were also able to align Dubai with key artists with huge influence within our passion point, placing the city at the heart of popular culture, within content audiences seek out and choose to watch. Our campaign far exceeded expectations, over-delivering on all KPI’s set by the client and achieving our overall target to boost awareness, consideration and appeal of Dubai as a holiday destination. Results: Boosted consideration of Dubai as a holiday destination by +22% (and appeal of Dubai by 24%) KPIs: -Reach & awareness: 470 Million views on music video (100% organic), branded content & BTS (50% organic) -3+ million social engagements on our content -Above target: 1600% -$20 million of earned media

The ‘Imagine Dubai’ campaign saw the city of Dubai being placed into pop-culture: the most consumed content on YouTube, music videos. An innovative approach, ‘location placement’, was used were the city heavily featured in bands new video, Thunder. Leveraging the singles radio & chart impact, we utilised an engaged fandom, who found the content on their own and did not skip. Views of the music video were 100% organic. The video provided longevity far beyond that of a usual campaign. We created behind the scenes and branded content, further leveraging the audience: increasing conversation, appeal & consideration for Dubai.

Our strategic approach was to engage our audience through entertaining content they would seek out organically, through owned, shared and earned touch-points, leveraging paid media only to boost content at key moments. We aligned creative & distribution approaches to capitalise on the natural life cycle of a music video &album release, in an authentic way. We did this through organic alignment with the band’s natural promotional period for their new album, which featured Dubai in their new music video ‘Thunder’. We leveraged Imagine Dragons as impactful Influencers for peer-to-peer engagement, within the global music passion point, with all content posted by the band, on their channels. Our brand message was present in the initial build-up &excitement prior to the new album and single release, during touring, as well as post campaign, with additional content from the band enjoying activities in Dubai, meaning reach and longevity far beyond a normal campaign.