2022 Winners & Shortlists

Why is this work relevant for Direct?

Getting Egyptians to 'Run for the Oceans', a global movement to end marine plastic waste, was almost impossible in a culture where our target audience, the youth who are 41% of the population, have an apparent consumer behavioral in social media consumption and react. This came to complement the lazy nature of the Egyptians, where supermarkets and pharmacies are around every corner of a block, and still provide a delivery service and another invention of the balcony pulling basket to avoid taking the stairs unless necessary. We had to influence and create a social conversation that urges Egyptians to act.

Background

The sports scene in Egypt has been fairly a clean slate, sportswear brands are considered niche which is shown through the value of the sportswear market vs. FMCGs proving people's low interest in sports, let alone running. Given that the Nile River is the 5th greatest contributor to the ocean waste according to UN Environment report in 2018, Egypt has been identified a potential market where adidas can leave a mark by bringing its sustainability philosophy to life through ‘Run for the Oceans’ campaign, a global movement to end marine plastic waste. It was completely irrelevant to Egyptians especially in a country where responsible communication has always adopted mainly societal and health topics rather than environmental, hence, the overall awareness on sustainability issues was almost non-existent. Our objective for this campaign was to influence our audience to take the necessary action and positively contribute to the cause.

Describe the creative idea (30% of vote)

The impact of social throughout the past year has changed significantly where ‘Influencer Activism’ emerged - a change in the influencers' content and so change on audiences' perception on the power of social and influencers. To answer to our strategic idea, we created a social stunt on Instagram, where 75% of our audience are using 'Influencer Activism' to create a social movement that will lead to an action. By inspiring our audience to ‘run’, sell our brand and promote to our cause, the social stunt had two main phases, teasing and shocking. Phase 01 was to build anticipation on the “running” momentum, while keeping it real our 4 influencers shared their runs and posted their results from adidas app on their accounts. Phase 2 to appeal hard to our audience emotionally, urging the participation and taking a stance through 4 different videos which were customized for each Influencer.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

Egyptians might believe that change is necessary, their lazy nature have always delayed their action and have turned them to social media as the hub to unite and create a change without moving a finger. The ‘harming love’ built our idea, shocking Egyptians with how their low awareness on sustainability is harming the Nile River. Our target audience, the youth who are 41% of the population known to spend an average of 7H 36M a day surfing the internet from social media consumption to online gaming to watching videos, 79.9% of whom are on Instagram. Through a social conversation generating guaranteed engagement, we ensured the audience's change of behavior from being lazy to active participants, having them download the app, participate in the runs and track the impact of the runs on the collection of waste from the Nile River.

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

We created a social stunt on Instagram for 10 days to inspire our audience to ‘run’, sell our brand and promote our cause. Credible exposure and genuine relevancy had to be coupled in support of our 'Influencer Activism' approach through our 4 selected influencers who answer to our approach. Our social stunt had two main phases, phase 1 was to build anticipation while keeping it real. Our 4 influencers' shared their Runs from adidas app on Instagram, each post displayed the route map which were the campaign initials paving the way for the cause reveal and what the initials stand for. Phase 2, we had to choose the most startling Nile facts in our 4 different influencers' videos to connect emotionally with the audience and to trigger them to run. Following the Influencers' reveal, adidas united the voices of the influencers in one film and launched on its MENA page.

List the results (30% of vote)

In a country that had no intent in running, there was a total of 50,000 app downloads indicating an interest that was sustained post the campaign. Although, we aimed to engage 5,000 runners, over 30,000 Egyptian runners participated in 10 days. Moreover, we managed to engage 1 million young Egyptians in the story telling of the influencers and have them relate to the cause on a personal level, our local content outperformed global content by 43% on clicks, 20% on engagement, 20% on views, 475% on views completion.