2019 Winners & Shortlists

Synopsis.

“Social media has a dark side,” is a statement used and abused in today’s pop culture. Unfortunately, it takes becoming a victim of this ‘dark side’ to learn the consequences online platforms could have in our ‘offline’ lives. The UAE is an internet-dependent country. With one of the highest smartphone penetrations globally and an active appetite to both consume and create content, we are a people who live our online lives more ardently than we do our real ones. The UAE is also one of the safest countries in the world; a place where doors are left unlocked, children roam free and news is always positive. It was at the intersection of this social media dependency and general safety perception that we discovered the ‘dark side’ of social media. While offline the UAE is incredibly safe, online, the population becoming victim to cybercrime was growing at an alarming rate. As a telecom operator and internet provider to the UAE, du Telecom felt it was our duty to bring this issue to the fore. A brand that stands to ‘add life to life’ in a usually vibrant and colorful manner, we made a strategic decision to take on this darker subject and truly add value to our consumers’ lives. Digging deeper into the issue we realized that it was primarily a lack of awareness around ‘oversharing’ that led to most of cybercrime attacks; in fact 76% of our survey respondents never thought they were under threat from hackers and simply focused on continuing to enjoy the social validation they received from sharing personal information online. ‘It’s Your Life Until You Share It #PostWisely’ was born. Based on true stories we created films that resembled every day activities we all participated in; be that sharing live locations, pre-vacation boarding passes or personal family photos, and grabbed our consumer’s attention by showing them the perspective of how easy it was for a ‘cybercriminals’ to target their victims. We then amplified awareness by hijacking popular hashtags like ‘#homealone’, ‘#mybaby’ and ‘#vacation’ to target our audience with contextually relevant messages, highlighting the exact moments in which they opened themselves up to danger. This resulted in a drastic change in behavior, as 44% of survey respondents changed their privacy setting on social platforms as a result of the campaign. Whereas #PostWisely started an online movement, getting endorsed by over 30 of the region’s top influencers and becoming the 4th highest trending topic in the region. In recognition of this movement, du was invited to showcase #PostWisely and its values at high schools and universities across the UAE, positioning the brand as community leaders.