2022 Winners & Shortlists

Why is this work relevant for Entertainment?

With Orange, being the official sponsor of the African Cup of Nations; and with Egyptians being too fanatic towards the national team; we wanted to create a relevant and insightful campaign that can win Egyptians hearts. Egypt won a record of 7 cups, however we haven’t won in 11 years and the fans started to become hopeless and disinterested, so instead of doing the cheerful, patriotic song, we brought super star footballers, featured them in a humorous film, playing on a true insight that targeted masses and chose to actually support the team the way Egyptians did.

Background

Situation Egypt is the most successful and decorated team in the history of Africa - but we’ve been quite dire in the tournament for 11 years, and this led the fans to become quite disheartened and anxious about this years participation. In short, the entire nation was giving out vibes that this cup is non-negotiable, and we need to have a good showing. At this time of the year, all competition are expected to create campaigns communicating very similar messages. Egyptians are quite intrusive in the players’ personal lives, judging both, their performance and behavior. Brief and Objectives Orange wanted to create a campaign that can stand out in the clutter, to announce that they are the official sponsors of the African Cup of Nations and support the national team.

Describe the creative idea

When it comes to football, Egyptians are a bit too fanatic towards the national team and it's non-negotiable to lose any match in the African Cup of Nations. This is because Egypt have won the tournament 7 times, but it's been 11 years since they’ve brought it home. So the fans would do anything in their powers for the team to do well, even if it’s slightly intrusive and weird. Add to that, Egyptians are quite big on humor, so we had to communicate that in our main idea, tagline and our films. We featured 3 super star footballers, one in each film. The idea is that the players want to do normal every day pastimes that are seemingly ‘harmful’ for footballers, but are stopped by average Egyptians all under the line “Anything for the 8th, Bring it home”

Describe the strategy

In a market that is overcrowded with cheerful, theatrical, patriotic song and dance ads; we chose to be “Consumer Centric” instead of being “Brand Centric”, communicating the fans point of view instead of ours, giving domination to the fans. So, we escaped the competitive herd and built our strategy based a true insight, after analyzing current behavior of fans towards the national team. While we also used a relatable tone of voice to the masses “Humorous” since we Egyptians are quiet big on humor. We wanted to show that we as a brand, were on the same wavelength as fans and wanted to bring back confidence to every Egyptian football fan, communicating their voices and concerns to the players while also making the players feel responsible for the 8th cup.

Describe the execution

Our three films each revolve around a specific player in the national team. The idea is that the players want to do normal every day pastimes that are seemingly ‘harmful’ for footballers, but are stopped by average Egyptians. In one film, Ahmed Hegazy is not let into the movie theatre because the ticket usher thinks it’s too much of a late screening for him, and he needs some rest before the tournament. In another film, Ahmed Fattouh orders fries at a diner, but the waiter insists that he eats grilled vegetables instead. In the final film, Wensh wants to ride his motorcycle home but the security guard at the parking lot decides to lock the garage so that he can take a cab instead and not risk any injury.

Describe the outcome

Our copies went insanely viral in Egypt, we didn’t follow trend, we created our own, user generated content overflowed the social media with thousands of organic memes and with the biggest sports pundits started quoting our campaign line and insight. Famous brands capitalized on the campaign hype, hijacking the insight to create content on their page; brands as Harley Davidson, big food chains as well as transportation and more, all tagging Orange to engage with people and the brand. Gaining More than 100M Views, 80M impressions, breaking market industry average benchmarks with View-through-rate 45.27% and hitting Facebook benchmarks with Engagement rate 33%