2019 Winners & Shortlists

Synopsis.

BACKGROUND In 2016 Careem wanted a launch campaign to go across the region and go up against the market leader UBER. It was David versus Goliath. The problem was our media budget was very small and would not get sufficient reach in our key markets. We needed our campaign to get organically shared to get the impact we needed. IDEA We created an ad that no one knew was an ad. Dubai is always testing crazy methods of Transport, like flying taxis, hyper loop pods, driverless cars etc. So we decided to do our own transport method test: ‘The Human Slingshot’ which resulted in a spectacular fail, highlighting that Careem is the better way to get around. We shot in a handheld style to make it more believable that it was a real video as opposed to an ad. This was the teaser part that we hoped would get organically shared and when it did we would take claim to it and release our branded revealer. For the teaser phase we planned on using 5 or 6 key influencers to share it first in the hope it would go viral. However we realised we couldn't afford all the influencers we needed to share it so we had to pull a stunt so they would share it for free. MEDIA STUNT (TRICKING INFLUENCERS INTO SHARING OUR AD FOR FREE) We used all our $2800 media budget to pay just one influencer to share our unbranded teaser via WhatsApp to a group he was in. This group chat had other influencers in it, he didn’t say it was an ad, he just sent it like a crazy video he had seen and asked the group was it real or fake? They then shared the video not knowing it was an ad. Then more influencers shared it across the region. Straightaway it got shared on all news pages around the region asking the question 'is this real or fake?'. It was globally shared by sites like Unilad, 9Gag, HERB, Men’s Humour. World news sites shared it and then celebrities shared it too (Snoop Dogg, LMFAO and more). It was now a global phenomenon so we released our branded version and owned up to it. Once we did this all news sites & pages around the world showed it was a Careem ad. From then on we had keyboard warriors across the world blasting the comments section of every page saying that it was an ad and posting our branded version. The internet became our free PR machine. RESULTS 1 Careem is now the biggest mover of people in the region. 2 9 key markets needed to be reached. We surpassed this KPI by 1567% as our launch campaign has now been seen in over 150 countries around the world. 3 With a total media spend of $2800 we earned free media worth $4,198,113. That is a 149,833% increase on our original spend. 4 Organic views of over 94 million.