2022 Winners & Shortlists

Why is this work relevant for Media?

When it came to staycations in the UAE Yas Island Abu Dhabi was not top of mind. Yas Island is a challenger brand with nominal media spending in comparison to our competition in Dubai. So we created - “Stayin’ on Yas” inspired by the Bee Gees as our summer staycation anthem. What started as a music video, inspired countless memes, Tik Tok challenges, and Spotify playlists. 16 million views in 4 days, we became the most talked-about piece of branded content in the UAE. With a nominal budget, we hijacked media channels across the UAE.

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 from within the UAE. Brief - Position Yas Island as an attractive staycation destination This sudden restriction in travel led to an increase in people exploring domestic staycation possibilities. For residents in the UAE, this meant choosing to stay closer to home. Objective - Challenge the audience’s perception of the standard staycation and increase consideration of a more exciting and fun-filled staycation.

Describe the creative idea / insights (30% of vote)

Booking data and focus groups showed us that most audiences have the same typical expectation and image of a staycation: hotel, pool, beach, repeat. Lazy, low energy and expected. Yas Island is home to record-breaking theme parks, Formula 1 racing, wall climbing, golfing, shopping, water sports, shopping, nightlife... and plus hotels, pools and beach vibes. Sounds exciting... but being in Abu Dhabi didn't seem to excite UAE staycationers who were flooded with offers from louder more established destinations in other emirates. We had to change the conversation and permanently associate Yas with staycations. We knew music was a powerful medium to get people to listen up, open up and ultimately show up to Yas Island. So our song had to make that link while being recognizable, relatable and fun. By re-imagining the song, we created Stayin on Yas – a quirky, stylish music video that celebrated how we do staycations.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

Start with the big launch: Unlike the traditional offer-led campaign created by most travel and tourism brands, we adopted a direct launch approach. The campaign officially launched with the catchy music video on major online platforms – YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. Launching the campaign with a big impact from the start would allow us to work toward one crucial goal: build a qualified audience pool to retarget down the line with laser-focused conversion assets. Sell the destination: One of our primary goals was to drive conversions/bookings for the campaign which meant taking the wide organic reach achieved by the campaign and using that qualified audience pool as a retargeting database to create uniquely targeted display and search messages driving people to the Yasisland.ae booking portal and book a staycation package on the island.

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

The staycation space in the UAE is cluttered with offers from established destinations. Furthermore, audiences make decisions quickly for domestic summer vacations – so we had one shot to cut through and get people to see us as the ideal staycation destination. By re-imagining the song and building on the legendary spirit of the original, we created a quirky, stylish music video that was released on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook. The initial burst of the piece was 10 days. We then released the track on Spotify to generate streams and wider exposure; we launched a Tok Tok Challenge to boost engagement and reach; We reposted and amplified UGC and homegrown meme content to connect with audiences; we also used persona-building and consumer data sets to target different vacationers with hyper-contextualized digital messaging.

List the results (30% of vote)

Despite border restrictions, the campaign broke into local pop culture and positioned Yas as ‘the place to staycation’ during summer. It generated media coverage across popular outlets like LovinDubai, Dubai Problems, DubaiLad, The National, Gulf News, etc. Beyond positive comments and shares, the campaign inspired user generated content in the form of homegrown memes, copycat videos and lots of dancing via our Tik Tok Challenge. In terms of metrics: 1. YouGov brand health scores show that Yas achieved the highest growth (42%) in buzz & ad awareness 2. Campaign reached 16 million views and 7% engagement rate, making it one of the UAE’s most successful campaigns 3. Online bookings increased by 185.21%, average order value increased by 20.9%, demonstrating increased length of stay – that’s a 224.85% total increase in revenue 4. e-Commerce conversion rate spiked up 224.07% to reach all-time highs, reflecting high-intent website traffic