2022 Winners & Shortlists

Why is this work relevant for Entertainment?

This campaign solves a societal behavioral problem in an entertaining way. It sheds light on the problem in a series of entertaining and comical films, depicting different personas that stem from society itself.

Background

2021 was economically tough on Saudi Arabia. Incomes were reduced and sales tax increased significantly. For the first time in the Kingdom, many people were on a budget. Zain, one of Saudi’s leading telecom providers, created affordable bundles to help people get through these tough times. But Saudis couldn’t see value in them, yet, because Saudis didn’t know how to save, yet. Saudis come from generations of abundance. That means they can sometimes be careless spenders. For example, they might pay and subscribe to a streaming website, and not notice that they already get it for free, as part of another bundle. So, how could they see value in the new Zain affordable bundles, if they were broke, from purchasing other things, that well.. were useless? We needed to educate them so they could truly benefit from our Shabab bundles.

Describe the creative idea

Introducing the Zain ‘Save Your Pocket Association’. Here to stop Saudis from buying useless things during these tight times. We created a program that monitors, halts and advises on people’s spending. Literally saving their pockets from their bad decisions. To launch the program we created a series of entertainment films that comically highlight the different overspending personas. We had the serial buyer, the hoarder and the gym membership collector, among others. We made each fictional spender relatable to each person watching, while comically bringing to the surface the overspending problem.

Describe the strategy

It became apparent that if we wanted to help Saudis during these tough times, we needed to complement our product with a change of behavior. But first, Saudis needed to be aware that they had an overspending problem. So we decided to shed light on it in an entertaining way, all the while bringing a societal behavioral problem to the surface. Our target audience had no age or gender, it had a spending pattern and mindset. So we targeted hoarders, gym membership collectors and serial buyers among others, but overall, we targeted a mentality and a behavior. Our overspending program interrupted the whole buying cycle. But our films brought the problem to the surface.

Describe the execution

To bring the problem to the surface, we created films that highlighted the different personas of over spenders. One film portrayed the hoarding Garshee3 family. A 2nd film depicted a gym membership collector. A 3rd film portrayed roommates worried about rent while one of them decides to purchase.. a peacock. The 4th film showed a man that purchased a useless snipper outfit and is trying to make use of it at a kid’s birthday party. The 5th film showed a gaming girl that’s more into the gaming branding and memorabilia than the game itself. The 6th film showed a yoga fanatic that was way more into the yoga set up than the actual yoga. The films were spread on social, online, on tv and in cinema. They were targeted at over spenders. They led people to the website where they discovered a full ‘swapping of useless items’ program.

Describe the outcome

We successfully brought a societal problem to the surface and then interrupted an entire buying cycle. We were literally everywhere and Saudis saw us everywhere. 1100% increase in sales of bundle subscriptions 91 Million Impressions 36 Million Engagement 31M Views with a completion rate 2x higher than industry’s average 1 whole Kingdom, on a new budget mindset.