Dubai, UAE, December 10, 2012: Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG), Dubai’s leading multinational media agency, has been awarded a Gold Effie for its pioneering Emirates Airline campaign. The award ceremony – held at the Armani Hotel on 21st November 2012 – saw SMG take home a Gold- the highest honor in the Travel, Tourism & Transportation category for the group’s cutting-edge media campaign, which achieved a staggering 158 per cent uplift in brand favorability across the BBC audience and delivered an overall campaign ROI of $10.66.
“I would like to thank Emirates Airline for entrusting us with and empowering us to produce award-winning content,” said John Antoniades, Chief Executive Officer of SMG MENA. “For this campaign, SMG coordinated 27 local media plans, working with creative entities in over 20 different languages, across multiple platforms and with a number of agency and supplier stakeholders. It is always so rewarding and gratifying to realize the significant business impact of a media campaign. We are so honored to receive such a prestigious award; it serves as an emblem of recognition and reflects the innovative creativity of our team.”
“As a brand known for innovation, Emirates aims to produce communications that push the boundaries and challenge convention. This award is testament to our achieving this goal,” said Georgette Kolkman, Manager Corporate Brand Communications, Emirates. “This award is shared by the Emirates Corporate Communications team, our lead partners Starcom and StrawberryFrog, and supported by our all our agency partners across the network, who successfully launched Hello Tomorrow consistently in all our markets and at all customer touch points globally.”
Indeed, the campaign’s ability to ignite international conversations across a variety of media platforms – including the BBC, CNN and Yahoo! – is what garnered it immense popularity. The project succeeded in building virtual bridges between people and places as well as cultures and ideas, thanks to engaging and quirky content, a bespoke tab called ‘Inspired Culture’ and a BBC series entitled Collaboration of Cultures.
The campaign also formed a dedicated community of Globalistas – from across the world – involving them in a slew of artistic collaborations centering on coffin art, interpretative Bollywood dance and millinery.
“With the ‘Hello Tomorrow’ campaign, our brief was to ignite a cultural movement, and to inspire and connect people around the world, empowering them to create a brighter future. Through a number of key media partnerships we were able to connect with our audience in a truly innovative and inspiring way. This was evident in our campaign results which had engagement levels as high as 12%, our highest interactive rate and ROI” said Alexandra Reynolds, International Client Services Director at SMG MENA.
SMG also won two Silver awards for Adidas ‘Unleash Deadly’ and Emirates NBD ‘Pay Yourself First’ campaigns. In addition to twelve short-listed entries, this success is in line with the agency’s standing as the most awarded media agency in the region. SMG was the only media agency to win Gold at the event and did so with one of the highest rankings in the ‘Effie Global Effectiveness’ index for the region compared to all other creative and media agencies.
About Starcom MediaVest Group
Starcom MediaVest Group is the Human Experience Company. Our dream is to grow our clients’ business by transforming human behavior through uplifting, meaningful human experiences. These brand ‘experiences’ are brought to life by distinct, strategic point-of-views—Truth and Design and Space for Ideas– created and owned by SMG’s two global agency brands: MediaVest and Starcom, respectively. Ranked one of the largest brand communications groups in the world, Starcom MediaVest Group (www.smvgroup.com) encompasses an integrated network of human experience strategists, investment specialists, content creators and digital experts. With nearly 7,200 employees in 110 offices worldwide, SMG partners with the world’s leading companies including The Coca-Cola Company, Kraft, P&G, Samsung, and Microsoft.
