2018 Winners & Shortlists

WE'RE LISTENING

Short List
BrandVICE
Product/ServiceTHE LAUNCH OF VICE ARABIA
EntrantVICE ARABIA Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
CategoryOnline: Fiction & Non-Fiction
Idea Creation VICE ARABIA Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Production VICE ARABIA Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

The Campaign

In order to be the voice of Arab youth you have to listen first. VICE globally pushes societal and cultural conversations forward and it wanted to be true to that in this region as well. “We’re Listening’ was created to allow for a trusted space to speak freely. By asking simple personal and cultural questions VICE aimed to collate a true insight on young modern Arab life. The campaign was rolled out with a complex filming schedule in 14 cities across the region, and through a digital ‘voicemail’ service allowing anonymous contributions to the project. Bil Arabi (In Arabic) was the a culmination of the ‘We’re Listening’ project. A feature-length film that brings our audience on a beautiful journey through the Middle East, meeting a cross-section of diverse young Modern Arabs, sharing their hopes, fears and aspirations on screen for the first time ever.

Creative Execution

• Timeline In its entirety the movie took five months to make. VICE prides itself on its contributors and authenticity, so scouting and using fixers in the relevant cities was paramount to the success of this project..We shot across 14 cities over five weeks. And we ran the digital Voice message service alongside user-generated social ads. Editing all the co-created content and making the film took 6 weeks. The campaign went live on 22nd November. • Placement Bil Arabi was used to launch VICE.com, so we only had two placements, one on YouTube and the primary placement on vice.com/ar • Scale Dozens of contributors, multiple countries and hundreds of moving parts – this was a huge undertaking co-ordinated by a small core team, inspired by purpose.

• Reach The final film reached 9 million views across our newly launched platforms despite only having a very limited media budget for just five days. The remaining views over the coming days were organic, so indicative of how the content resonated with the target audience. • Engagement The positive comments on all social platforms were indicative of delivering on our purpose, not just giving a voice to Arab youth, but also pushing the conversation forward, sparking online debate. • Impact. We delivered on our goal of launching VICE Arabia in a way that avoided the risk of being a typical international brand in this market trying to trade off global reputation and the innate level of arrogance that implies. We listened before we spoke… and the result was that from day one we secured a young audience who identified us as the voice they had been waiting for.

In a region governed by conservative laws, many topics are never ‘freely’ discussed… until the ‘We’re Listening’ campaign and the feature ‘Bil Arabi’ finally filled the silence and allowed young Arabs to speak freely for the first time ever on cultural and personal topics that mattered most to them. While the brief was to launch VICE Media in MENA, the work was driven by VICE’s ongoing purpose of inspiring actions and creating value-driven content that pushes societal and cultural change. The result was a campaign packed with insights that resonated across the region.

VICE believes in empowering the younger generation. Our expansion into the Middle East was driven by a purpose of providing real human-led stories for, by and about young Arabs. We really needed to show VICE’s young audience that it was a sincere brand and authentic in it's approach. We had to show them that VICE stands by its mission of always placing them first and that, regardless of environment, we would not just add to, but help push societal conversations forward. Co-created content was a huge part of this strategy: while gathering answers to our questions, we also repurposed user submitted answers as social ads to successfully inspire others to participate. We had to directly involve our audience so our crews and our contributors were young, from the region and empowered. They had to feel part of this production in every sense for us to be true to our purpose.

Credits

Name Company Role
Ciaran Bonas VICE Arabia Creative Director MENA
AWS AL-JEZAIRY VICE Arabia Managing Editor
MERNA THOMAS VICE Arabia Producer
ISLAM RAYYES VICE Arabia Editor-in-Chief
MILÈNE LARSSON VICE UK Supervising Producer
Emma Hill VICE Arabia Head of Production
RONY KARKAR VICE Arabia Editor
DIANE FARAH VICE Arabia Editor
AHMED EL GENDY VICE Arabia Assistant Editor
Anas Al Hakim VICE Arabia Senior Creative
Ameer Daou VICE Arabia Content Editor
Majd Abi Ali VICE Arabia Head of Audience
SHADI KABBESH VICE Arabia Graphic Designer
ALEX MILLER VICE UK Creative Director, EMEA
Jason Leavy VICE Arabia Managing Director
Shane Smith VICE USA CEO
Eddy Moretti VICE USA Chief Creative Officer
Suroosh Alvi VICE USA Co Founder
Links
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