2019 Winners & Shortlists

Background.

Situation: After 28 years, Egypt finally qualified for the Fifa World Cup. Which meant that everyone’s attention was geared towards the Egyptian Football National Team. Nafas, a social enterprise aiming at rehabilitating young teens at risk, was participating in a global upcoming event; the street child world cup, parallel to the Fifa World Cup. Brief: Rexona and Clear, contrary to all the other brands, decided to communicate a cause instead of glorifying the main Egyptian team. They were supporting Nafas and their street “champions”. But they had two challenges, the negative perceptions surrounding street children in Egypt and grabbing everyone’s attention. Objectives: Introducing the Nafas team in a new light and grabbing attention in a time where everyone’s gaze drew toward a bigger, louder event.

Describe the creative idea.

The children at Nafas and famous football idols have something very strong in common; they all started on the streets. Street football is extremely common among young Egyptian men, and it resonates with even the biggest stars abroad. That’s why Rexona and Clear used this to communicate their cause. Street football was a way to show the kind of environment these kids grew up in using whatever they had to practice their passion. For others they’re just streets, for our heroes, every corner is a pitch or a playground.

Describe the strategy.

Rexona and Clear decided to not focus on football despite Egypt’s celebrations for their qualification in the world cup, instead they paid attention to the underdog. With a momentous occasion we went where our audience naturally flooded, all football media channels and news portals. We used the Fifa World cup as our vehicle to draw attention from most Egyptians to our cause. The campaign also fit with the brand persona through three pillars: -Performance: The Nafas national team of street children faced with a very tough situation, were able to nonetheless defy their circumstances and aim for the international stage. -Movement: Being surrounded by challenges meant they can only persevere through insistence and movement. -Confidence: They were aiming for the stars and following through on their dreams, their language is bold and proud despite their backgrounds. Rexona and Clear were the confidence enablers for the kids making them shine.

Describe the execution.

Implementation: The campaign launched with a film that shed light on the Nafas team as “street champions” subtly showing their environment and speaking in familiar street football lingo. The film was followed by media coverage on channels and news articles, and creating merchandizing through bags and t-shirts to support the team. Timeline: The street child world-cup was due to happen a month before the fifa world cup and during Ramadan. So the campaign launched in the midst of all the coverage and frenzy of the Egypt’s qualification, utilizing the flooded football channels for the cause. The launch started with a film glorifying the team followed by the merchandizing and continued with updates of their training and eventual participation in the Street Child World Cup. Placement and scale: We used football digital portals and social media sites and got coverage in several popular football sites in Egypt as well-known TV shows.

List the results.

Our film had an ad recall uplift of 22%. Our masthead achieved a click through rate of 2.88% - almost 10 times the benchmark, while our digital coverage of the team’s journey achieved an engagement rate of 11.5%, almost twice the 6% benchmark. We went from a completely unknown team to one that had 5000 fans invested enough to buy Nafas branded bundles, t-shirts and bags. The country’s main football portals, YallaKora and Kora 11, took to our cause covering the campaign and rallying up support. Marketing publications such as Think Marketing got in on the action, as did general interest publications such as Egyptian Mail, and Middle East Eye. We had TV coverage from the most popular local shows including; CBC’s “Ma3kom Mona El Shazly”, CBC’s “Hona el 3asema with Lamis El Hadidy”, DMC’s “8 el Sobh with Ramy Radwan”, and DMC’s “El Hareef with Ibrahim Fayek”.