2020/2021 Winners & Shortlists

THE JOURNEY OF LIFE

BrandINFINITI
Product/ServiceINFINITI
EntrantOMD Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
CategoryTalent: Digital & Social
Idea Creation OMD Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Media Placement OMD Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Production OMD Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Additional Company DMS Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

Why is this work relevant for Entertainment?

Infiniti’s voice was being heard but it did not resonate loud enough. The brand had an opportunity to echo what it stands for: Human. Daring. Forward. With the “Journey of Life”, Infiniti’s intentions were not to sell cars, but to create an echo loud enough that can be evoked through culturally significant ripples. Through the power of storytelling, Infiniti found its voice through the voices of those with inspiring journeys. The brand created Infiniti-TV, a platform that transcends traditional media campaigns by hosting a web series detailing that living is not about the destination, but rather the journey itself.

Background

Looking at the consumer journey through Infiniti’s brand health tracker, the brand was not lacking in top of mind awareness but fell behind across the rest of the funnel. The business challenge lied in moving the needle in Familiarity and Favourability as Infiniti saw an opportunity loss of 40% versus Competitors in consumers considering a premium Automotive brand. This business challenge was created by a lack of synergy between the brand values and how it resonated against the prospective audience. Infiniti’s voice was not evoking the spark and desire to keep audiences engaged throughout the purchasing journey. Knowing this, how will Infiniti’s voice resonate louder in order to get potential considerers to favour and get familiar with the brand?

Describe the creative idea

Infiniti created these stories as cultural ripples, similar to how others have created them before us, for they are generational, as they have been keeping humanity’s spark blazing since the dawn of time. At the heart of our idea stands the “Journey of Life” web series and the way in which its most poignant echoes, the stories themselves, have painted the tapestry of our most human emotions. Rather than using the brand’s voice to tell stories, Infiniti has empowered the voices of others to resonate with what the brand stands for. The power of storytelling has been the steppingstone in the foundation of what it means to be human, daring and forward.

Describe the strategy

We wanted to reach anyone who loves a great story. The stories of 10 individuals powered the narrative of “The Journey of Life” with Noureldine, our hero driver shedding a spotlight on them. This webseries hosted on Infiniti-TV featured Noureldine, the hero driver of the series, who picks up the influencers, to learn more about his/ her life, what inspires them, their struggles, and what they would still like to accomplish. Their journeys exposed them to surprises in places they thought they knew, and adventure in places they had never been. To resonate with this broader target audience, Infiniti launched the “Journey of Life” campaign through high reach digital media combined with 74 pieces of tailormade video content to channel, ad format and most importantly consumer interests and engagement, as the ”Journey of Life” had a story that appealed to everyone’s taste, from music, food, fitness, you name it.

Describe the execution

The strategic drive was to achieve digital synergies between the media and creative processes which took place in parallel to ensure the fluidity between ideation, execution and success. By partnering with a renowned local digital network, we gained access to a variety of websites from the Fashion, Automotive, Music and Sports verticals that resonated with the “Journey of Life” stories. Programatically, the data strategy was constructed upon two phases: Inspire and Educate. By facilitating the transfer of high-quality data between the phases, we aimed to increase the engagement with the brand through familiarity. In the Inspire phase, we prospected the most relevant audiences by data-capturing engagements as key events with a Teaser. We segmented the audiences based on their behavior and by matching them with a profile of each of the stories. It allowed us to remarket the engaged audiences with cut-down videos and push them to the relevant Story.

Describe the outcome

With the power of storytelling, we were able to strengthen the link between brand and consumer. One month into this journey, we have moved the needle in Brand Favourability and Familiarity by achieving a 20% uplift. The viewers were highly engaged, consuming 328 hours, 11 minutes and 48 seconds worth of branded content, higher than any other campaign done by Infiniti previously. Simultaneously, the social engagement peaked with a rate of 8.4% against the brand average of 3.3%.

Credits

Name Company Role
Petal D'Mello OMD UAE Manager-Strategic Marketing Investments
Jomana Asfour OMD UAE Manager - Content & Experiences
Roxanne Gahol OMD UAE Associate Director- Strategic Marketing Investments
Danielle Makarem OMD UAE Executive-Planning
Muhammad Yasir OMD UAE Creative Strategist
Rawan Khairallah OMD UAE Associate Creative Director
Andrea Tan OMD UAE Senior Executive-Performance
Alexandru Grama OMD UAE Digital Manager - Performance
Terry Mo OMD UAE Director-Performance
Haytham Zoghby OMD UAE Executive Creative Director
Saleh Ghazal OMD UAE Managing Director
Robert Nammour Digital Media Services Branded Content Director
Yasmin Mebar Digital Media Services Branded Content Senior Manager
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