2022 Winners & Shortlists

Why is this work relevant for Media?

The summer staycation season was a price and offer-led battleground during the pandemic. Established players in Dubai had legacy, brand recognition and bigger media budgets working in their favor. Over the (restricted) border, Yas Island Abu Dhabi had to think differently in order to not only break into the consideration set but to dominate it. Applying a multi-tiered funnel approach, we drove awareness, engagement, and brand recall through powerful entertaining episodic content online. We then used target segmentation, influencer co-creation, and hard-working tactical messaging to drive up consideration and ultimately conversion.

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 / insights (30% of vote)

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 tired toys into spokespeople starring in their own content series - Toy Talks. We researched the region's most popular toys and gave them their own personalities, backstories and psychological traumas, and then we let them tell their story and implore families and kids to take a break on Yas... because when the kids take a break so do they.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

Emerging affluent families are the most prized demographic for any leisure and entertainment destination in the UAE, however, Yas Island lacked awareness and consideration amongst this audience. We needed to target this audience in way that would most likely turn desirability and intent to visit into a booked staycation on the island. Our business objectives weren’t built upon simply amassing the total volume of visitors, but on driving average yield per visitor. However, in order to move EAF towards action, we couldn’t target them exclusively. We needed mass response for our idea to take flight. Analysis of travel preferences revealed that destinations with higher social clout benefited the most from tourism – the more widely discussed your destination, the more visitors you’re likely to get. Hence, our goal was to make a cultural imprint and generate a sense of interest and cultural cache as the destination everyone is talking about.

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

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.

List the results (30% of vote)

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%