Smart cars “Unlock Beirut”
Check the campaigns video edit on: unlockbeirut A must!
Smart cars “Unlock Beirut”
By Admin I : So after a series of shocking local campaigns, and a very calm season in advertising and design, what could make your critical minds go back to the buzzy pattern of work other than putting an award winning campaign under the spotlights.
Smart launched “unlock beirut” a while ago and was able to win a gold at the Dubai Lynx award show, proving that multinational advertising agencies in Lebanon can achieve big even with commercial brands like “Smart” and without the reach for the big Oh-so-NGO campaigns that are usually treated as potential award magnets.
The campaign was tailored to reach a young audience and fit a small budget (typical reach for online from cheap clients) rather than running a traditional ad campaign, a competition was developed using Facebook, allowing consumers to experience the car themselves. Unlockbeirut.com was launched, calling on 18 locals to uncover new shortcuts, parking spots and landmarks in the smart for two.With the incentive of owning the car for 6 months. For a period of one month,each of the selected participants got the smart fortwo and an iPhone for 3 days. And through a specially designed geo-tagging smart app,all their discoveries were instantly pinpointed onto a map on the smart-Lebanon Facebook page.
Bla bla bla, By the end of the competition, more than 400 new city treasures were unlocked in Beirut (a city of 67km2). The smart-Lebanon Facebook page received more than 32,000 active users, bla bla, and a map was launched with all the landmarks on it. A note on the side, and a topic we’re tackling very soon, what you read earlier is an “edit” done by all agencies, with high levels of not-so-accurate numbers, figures and irrelevant associations to prove the campaigns “success”.
To end it here, the campaign itself had a very design oriented purpose, even though I’m sure the client had no intentions to adopt this design mission, since info graphics is still underestimated in this country.. Well everything is!!
The mapping job proved successful and highly interesting even though it’s indeed an award show oriented campaign that wouldn’t change behaviors. A Smart car target audience wouldn’t even care about mapping Beirut, since it’s not by any means an added value for him, being a spoiled brat wanting to buy a car that fits anywhere, even under a six wheeler.
Good job and long live clients buying information design for all sorts of purposes (weird sentence!)
Credits:
Agency: JWT Mena
Creative director: Iyad Zahlan
