2019 Winners & Shortlists

Why is this work relevant for PR Lynx?

This campaign is a perfect manifestation of a PR fueled stunt, whereby we ditched traditional TV announcements in favor of an outdoor stunt that used graffiti and billboards to spread a bold teasing question across Saudi: “You Want us to Remain Silent?”. The question became an instant buzz, & due to political & social sensitivities, we had to quickly release the revealer under the headline “We won’t be silent” announcing Dawood’s new show. Together, the online reaction to the stunt and the massive PR coverage generated millions of dollars in earned media.

Background

Dawood Al Sharyan is the most vocal TV host in Saudi Arabia, known for breaking social taboos. 2 years ago, and as Saudi went through tremendous socio-economic reforms, Dawood was handed the job of launching and running a more modern TV channel while modernizing the current Saudi TV network. During which, Dawood was away, and his show stopped for 2 years, creating a nation-wide void that many tried to replace in vain. Our brief was to launch Dawood’s new talk show, with the objective of creating enough buzz in a country that for the past 2 year have been witnessing lots of buzz due to continuous reforms. Our challenge was to be the buzz in a country that is currently the buzz

Describe the creative idea.

Our insight was our hero himself: Dawood Al Sharyan. Undeniably Dawood is one of the wildest, boldest and most outspoken TV-presenters in the gulf. And our communication needed to be just like that… bold and wild. So, to announce his new show, we purposefully used a defiant yet cryptic message that holds various interpretations. And to make it more effective, we decided to start offline with a graffiti of this message: ‘Tiboona Neskit? (Arabic for “Do you want us to remain silent?”). A simple question that could have been easily understood as a challenge to the system especially within the context of transformation and all the political disruptions and changes that Saudi is going through. A question, as controversial as the show host himself.

Describe the strategy.

Saudi is known to live and breathe online. So much so that our target audience could have been easily reached online. However, as every brand, tweet and hashtag are trying to standout online, we opted to swim against the current. So, to differentiate, our strategy was to go with an offline stunt, by deploying graffiti which a unique medium that is symbolically as defiant and controversial as our host himself “Dawood”. Additionally, graffiti is a symbol of none-conformity which goes perfectly well with our teasing and provocative message “Do you want use to remain silent?”. Graffiti also allowed used to paint our message at strategic locations like tahliah street where thousands of people walk by every day, creating better reach and making it easier to fuel the message.

Describe the execution.

We started with a graffiti-made street messages in Arabic with a simple teaser question “Do you want us to remain silent?”. This was followed by billboards with the same teasers and when the question became a trending hashtag we posted online teasers as well. However, due to the controversy of the message, we had to launch the revealer sooner than we planned. Our revealer was also bold, however this time it was a message by Dawood himself announcing his new talk show with the headline “ma7na bsakteen” in Arabic, meaning “We won’t be silent”. The revealer was launched online in Arabic under the hashtag “we won’t be silent” which trended for 3 days like wildfire becoming an online sensation & a huge PR buzz & in no time, triggered an avalanche of reactions that left no issue unmentioned and ultimately made the show’s topic list

List the results.

By far, the campaign was wilder than Dawood himself. The message became a trending hashtag for 3 days and thousands joined the conversation, creating an unprecedented awareness about the program and resulting in an on-going online conversation that left no issue unmentioned. These user-generated issues are now being used as the show’s topic list. In numbers, our results are as follows: - 3229% increase in mentions about Dawood & posts reaching a total of 7,689 - 68 million impressions - 91.4% increase in articles mentioning Dawood; reaching a total of 690 unique articles between print, online news and blogs The cherry on top was generating a total of $3.1 million in earned PR value, while becoming the most viewied TV show since SBC went on air. In other words, Dawood’s comeback had a boom that reignited the social conversation in Saudi & brought back excitement for TV journalism in KSA.