2019 Winners & Shortlists

Why is this work relevant for Brand Experience & Activation?

On Valentine’s day, alfa ventured into content creation, releasing the video of a social experiment in which documenting the pure unscripted emotional love story of Saria and Kifah. Alfa’s content was so raw and grabbing that it stood out from the clutter, remaining relevant during a period of social media congestion. In a matter of days, this 1 moving video enabled Alfa’s reconnection to the Lebanese, shedding light on their CSR efforts and actively changing people’s live.

Background

Alfa, 1 of the 2 government-owned Telcos in Lebanon, has been pioneering digital transformation across the country, championing UN SDG 9 related to industry, innovation and infrastructure among others. Alfa have also been committed to bringing real and positive change to Lebanon through their CSR program Alfa 4-Life supporting Lebanese NGOs. However, even with all this tremendous progress in CSR, coverage, internet technology and innovative products, Alfa’s efforts remain unseen and unacknowledged by the people. Because Lebanese telco rates are some of the most expensive across the region/world, providing the government with the second highest source of revenue after taxation, people feel robbed and far from them. Our challenge was to reconnect Alfa with the people and substantiate Alfa’s credibility/ability in providing technology at the service of human health as opposed to being an opportunist corporation doing the Government’s dirty bidding.

Describe the creative idea.

In a country where people feel so disconnected from their government and telco providers, we worked to show them that there is no connection that can’t be restored. As a natural continuation of our CSR work with the visually impaired, we sought to restore a woman’s (Saria) eye sight using E-Sight glasses, enabling her to see her husband (Kifah) for the first time in 5 years on the occasion of Valentine’s Day.

Describe the strategy.

This unfortunate reality where Lebanese people are continuously exposed to problems caused by the system, paired with people’s negative perception of government affiliated corporations like alfa, creates a wide disconnect between the people and these institutions. If we can open people’s eyes though heart/warming and most importantly genuine content, enabling them to see past the general corruption and acknowledge Alfa’s position as a leader in providing technology and innovation at the service of human health, then we can untimely reconnect with them.

Describe the execution

To shoot our film, and with a budget of only $15,737, we secretly reached out to Kifah who brought his wife Saria onset, under the impression that we were just going to interview her. We then documented Saria and Kifah’s raw and unscripted reactions in a powerful piece of content captivating the whole nation. In order to maximize reach and engagement on social, we adopted a form of content that is trending and frequently consumed online:” Social News”. The headline:” Woman sees husband for the first time in 5 years” created a shock factor driving people to watch it and participate in this special act maximizing the film’s reach.

List the results.

The campaign was a great success and we were able to reconnect with the people shifting the conversation from negative to positive on all our social media channels in just 4 days. People were proud and relating to the brand’s initiative. • Sentiment: 96% Positive Sentiment • Engagement: 1.5+ Million Content Engagement • Reach: 2+ Million People Reached • Impressions: 5.5+ Million Impressions • Views: 3.6+ Million Views (In a country with 6 Million Inhabitants) But our campaign did not stop there, thanks to the overwhelming reach/results, we achieved: • Number of Inquiries: - 124 Inquiries, 240 Patients Screened (43 found eligible) - 11 people’s vision was restored Sales/Revenues: 36.85% increased Alfa Line Sales