2020/2021 Winners & Shortlists

Write a short summary of what happens in the film

It’s 1985. A warm summer afternoon in Hawkins, Indiana. Dustin and the gang from Stranger Things are all on a hilltop. Dustin is trying to contact his new girlfriend, Suzie, in Utah, using his new all-powerful ham radio. He doesn’t reach her, but his garbled message is picked up by three friends who are chilling outside a late night sandwich shop. In Saudi. At first, they can’t figure out where the strange sound is coming from. But when they realise it’s coming from the silver filling in one guy’s mouth, things get fun.

Cultural / Context information for the jury

Most commercials that air in Saudi present a picture perfect version of Saudis, that tend to misrepresent real people. For this film, we wanted to be super authentic in portraying the relationship between the friends, while staying true to Saudi culture, humour and the time period. Contrary to popular belief, Saudi in the 80’s was heavily influenced by Western culture and fashion. And Stranger Things gave us the perfect opportunity to bring out that nostalgia.

Please tell us about the social behaviour and / or cultural insights that inspired your campaign

The Saudi’s spend a lot of time online. They are the biggest user of Youtube per capita globally. They love long content, and use humour to express themselves and their opinions. We wanted to tap into that and create a piece of content that would get the Saudi’s laughing and watching the new season of Stranger Things. The friendship dynamics in Saudi heavily rely on banter, teasing and tough love, and we tried to capture that in our film in an authentic and funny way; using the right nuances and locally relevant jokes. Late night cruises with the boys or ‘Shabab’ is a typical pastime for Saudi youth. And you’ll always see cars parked in front of sandwich shops or ‘boufias’ - it’s the Saudi equivalent of the American teens hanging out in a diner. We took that situation and gave it a weird 80’s myth meets Stranger Things, twist.