In Saudi, where grooms are expected to pay the bride’s family a dowry for her hand in marriage, many young men are asked to bear financial burdens they cannot hope to shoulder. Saco Hardware, in collaboration with JWT, created a social media promotion that spotlights the financial challenges facing young people and positions the retailer as a tool for helping them.
We came up with a simple concept/story: A video clip shows young Mousaed making the traditional visit to his future father-in-law, who demands 28 items from Saco as a dowry. Returning home, Mousead finds the catalogue is ripped to shreds, and the young man is left to guess the names of the items he needs to buy. Photos of torn pages were posted to the Saco Facebook page, and people were encouraged to identify the products to help Mousaed get one more item toward his marriage. Correct guesses won items.
The campaign is doing well with minimal support, and the hope is to evolve the effort into a commitment to sponsor newlyweds who need to furnish their apartments. For more social media case studies, see our Social Media Checklist.
Photo Credit: http://www.facebook.com/sacoksa?v=app_7146470109#!/sacoksa?v=app_7146470109
The general sensation that politicians are disconnected from reality gets even more pronounced during a downturn, often contributing to anxiety. Several years ago an infamous incident showed Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s disconnect from everyday life: During a TV debate with citizens, a man asked him how much a coffee costs, and Zapatero answered “80 cents,” 40 cents under the actual price. “Zapateros’ coffee” became a classic media buzzword, indicating how out of touch politicians are with their countrymen.
In pitching cost-saving railcards to young people, families and the more senior among us, National Rail has moved from a positioning of pure cost savings to equating those savings with the warmer, cuddlier things in life. It seems that they’re seeking not only to address anxieties about the cost of rail travel (which is on the increase) but also those tied to the fact that we don’t connect face-to-face as much anymore. A headline of “1/3 off hugs with mum” is paired with the line “because a text won’t get your washing done”; “1/3 off hugs with grandad” adds the line “because it’s hard to play hide and seek on a webcam.”
It’s just a month to the Philippine elections, which will determine the next president and vice president and fill senatorial slots. Since the vote will have a major impact on the fate of people’s lives and that of the country, Filipinos cited the elections as a source of considerable anxiety in JWT’s 10 Trends local research, conducted in December 2009. For example, an engineer we interviewed said the elections will determine whether he needs to worry about his personal stability, as well as the country’s.




