2019 Winners & Shortlists

Background.

Deadpool 2 is an R-rated movie. The challenge was to launch the movie, being true to its spirit, its naughtiness and thus keeping credibility with loyal fans without offending any local sensibilities. This is after all the Middle-East. The objective was simple. Ryan Reynolds has 22 million fans. To do something he would happily post and share himself. Budget- Peanuts. Literally we were given the suit. Which did not fit. So $400 to tailor a suit and then convincing Dubai Mall this would also make them look cool. Large scale ambient in the biggest Mall in the world. One million visitors a week.

Describe the creative idea.

Take an iconic monument in Dubai and give it that Deadpool twist. Never done before because its a piece of art- its surprising yet simple. One of the famous divers at the waterfall was turned into Deadpool. It was like wtf ? Ultimately we were creating content that was talked about and shared.

Describe the strategy.

The strategy was simple. Do something that was worthy of Deadpool that would create some noise. Do something good enough that Ryan Reynolds would share. Do something with a suit, the only element of the film we had.We didn't have access to the star or any footage at the time. We had nothing. Not even much money. Target audience was superhero movie fans but especially existing fans of Deadpool. Get them excited enough to see the movie at the cinema rather than wait for it on on iTunes.

Describe the execution.

After getting approval to fit the suit on an iconic diver at Dubai Mall waterfall it soon became clear that the suit would not fit. The statues are in fact 7 foot tall. So with our limited budget we convinced a local tailor to make an original Deadpool suit. He had not heard of Deadpool but he rose to the challenge. Designing the suit to be a replica of the original with the same texture, look and feel. The same detailing including the swords. In fact crafting a suit good enough to get the approval of 20th Century Fox. It was a labour of love worthy of the movie.

List the results.

The brief was to create enough cultural impact that Reynolds himself would post it. That was achieved and his post is the most liked Dubai related post of all time with 1.8 million likes. It was shared by many other media outlets and individuals as well as generating huge traffic to the mall. It had genuine cultural impact, not pretend for awards cultural impact. For a while it was the trending conversation. It lifted the whole of Dubai as it felt like Dubai could also do cool stuff not just glitzy stuff. The box office was higher than predicted- enough for an extended run and enough to have a week 2 that was very little off week 1 - which is massive in the movie world.