2022 Winners & Shortlists

Why is this work relevant for Entertainment?

Yas Island had serious issues going into the summer staycation season. More established UAE destinations were engaged in endless price/offer wars, Abu Dhabi had border restrictions, and most families were not even considering Yas during summer. Instead of joining the price battles and noise, we decided to connect with families through what we do best and what they lacked the most - entertainment and vivid storytelling. Through the Toy Talks content series, we promoted our Kids Go Free offer in an organic, engaging and lightheartedly dramatic way. Each episode allowed families to see themselves through the struggles of their toys.

Background

The Situation - Impact of the pandemic As the pandemic brought global tourism to a halt, Yas Island Abu Dhabi, a business built to attract international visitation, suddenly had to pivot and focus solely on their resident market – which only represented 25% of their pre-pandemic attendance. This sudden shrinking of our audience and revenue stream put immense pressure on us to pivot and attract domestic staycation audiences during summer from within the UAE. Brief - Promote our Kids-Go-Free offer and position Yas Island as the ultimate family destination this summer. Objective - Since the product is primarily sold online on yasisland.com, our objectives needed to focus on improving our e-commerce KPI's. This included building significant social clout for our kids go free offer and driving higher quality traffic to the portal and improving conversion rate of the traffic and improving the efficiencies of the budget spent.

Describe the creative idea

During the pandemic, families were locked in the house. When it was time to entertain the kids, one class of heroes rose to the challenge every day until they reached their breaking points. Those broken heroes were the toys. With things opening back up for summer, kids and families could finally go on an actual vacation... a real one. Who else gets to take a break when the kids do? The toys. Using this unique insight, we saw an opportunity to promote Yas Island's 'Kids Go Free' summer offer by turning these tired toys into spokespeople starring in their own content series - Toy Talks. We gave the region's most popular and iconic toys their own personalities, backstories and psychological traumas, and then we let them tell their stories and implore families and kids to take a break on Yas... because when the kids take a break so do they.

Describe the strategy

In a category driven by promotions, our strategy was hinged on creating a promotional summer campaign masquerading as an entertainment series. Our insight for the campaign came from the far-reaching impact Covid-19 had on parents around the world. With COVID-19 forcing everyone indoors we witnessed the rise of 18% in consumer spending for home entertainment. People began creating “home nests,” making significant investments in furnishing, durables, and tools and equipment. Unit sales of large-screen TVs soared, demand for cycles increased by 316% and the most interesting of these was a 16.7% increase in retail toy sales the highest growth in toy sales since 1990. Our insight emerged from this unique data point and offered a simple solution: Toys have been the unsung heroes of this pandemic, from zoom calls, virtual playdates, online learning lessons they’ve been everywhere bearing the brunt of entertaining children in the UAE.

Describe the execution

Our approach was to create a powerful business growth campaign masquerading as an entertaining miniseries. We needed the campaign to generate buzz and give us a strong audience pool that the campaign could later use for programmatic retargeting and create hyper-targeted conversion assets. 1) Launching ToyTalks online: We kicked things off with a Toy Talks Instagram page, documenting toys' daily struggles. People started sharing stories, memes, and even pics of their own tired toys. 2)Launching Episodic series Building on the fanfare, Yas launched an episodic mini-series on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook. Through social listening and search analysis, we identified the most common psychological stressors and crafted stories around the most purchased toys during the pandemic. we even took hosted on-ground activations and tie-ups to amplify engagement. 3) Selling the offer Building on the momentum, we retargeted our audience with tactical content that turned all that interest into engagement and conversions.

Describe the outcome

Even with border restrictions in Abu Dhabi, the campaign was a commercial success and a certified binge-worthy hit. Positive comments, likes and shares were pouring with every episode... along with news headlines from popular news outlets in travel, tourism and entertainment. The positive reception inspired us to take the toys on the road and host pop-ups, meet & greets and even get toy stores to give their own toys a break. In terms of metrics, we achieved: 3M+ VIEWS ONLINE 90% VIEW-THRU RATE 26% INCREASE IN ENGAGEMENT 70% GROWTH IN FOLLOWERS 60% RISE IN POSITIVE BRAND SENTIMENT Commercially, we more than met our initial KPI's: WEBSITE SESSIONS UP 150% during campaign WEBSITE SESSIONS UP 150% vs last year ON-PORTAL TRANSACTIONS UP 87.9% KIDS GO FREE REVENUE UP 107%