After a small poll I’ve done, decided to ditch video and go back to written blogs, it’s “my thing” apparently.

 

Kol sana wento tayyebeen,

So we live to see another Ramadan, with apparently a new set of ads (or are they the same?)

 

SPOILER ALERT: This is not a very happy blog post, if you are a client, creative or executive in agency waiting for “mabrook, el e3lan kassar el dnia ya m3allem” or to forward the article to your peers at work.. you wont find that here, not this time at least..

If you are in for some constructive criticism, please read on.

 

Sitting in 4^th day of Ramadan, we haven’t seen a massive flow of ads yet.. just the big telco’s, a teaser from Pepsi and some random copies here and there.

Overall honestly, I feel the creative output of the Egyptian ad industry is becoming more frail year after year... We have generally been known to be the strongest creative hub in the region, but with such outputs, I unfortunately feel we’ll be taking a back seat very soon and lose leadership in one of the very few industries we’re still ahead at.

 

If everyone wants to play it safe and keep doing what has already worked on the premise that “if its not broken, why fix it” aw "إللي تغلب به, إلعب به" y2ba 3aleih el 3awad.

 

I’ll be mainly talking about Telecom ads in this post, cz its too long to include anything else.. Honestly speaking, they all feel the same to me.. take out one logo and put the other and u won’t feel a hint of a difference, they’re all saying the same thing without a fraction of brand character infused in the copy..

Overall the star-studded song concept feels too bland after EIGHT YEARS of running the same idea, since Etisalat started this wave with their “2alo Magnoon” copy in 2010.. To put it in perspective, 8 years ago we were still kings of African Football (Captain Hassan Shehata’s crew), Hosny Mubarak was still president and Instagram was still an idea in Kevin Systrom’s sketchbook (the pre-influencer era, fakreeno? haa7!!)

That’s nearly a decade ago, a decade where we see the same ad with a different cast and lyrics.. come on!

Every year since then we have seen the same concept replicated one way or the other, get the hottest celebrities on the scene that year, put them all in a 2-3 minute song and ur set for the season.. Setting aside any regard for endorsement value, ROI, brand role, message association or even distinction from competition.. Just something to win over the crowds w khalas..

But seriously, 8 years later, I think it’s a shame for our creatives not to be able to come up with something different, OR to put their foot down and tell their clients “Sorry, we will not do another celebrity song”.

Why Etisalat was so successful in 2010 was because the novelty factor was there, concept was fresh, you were eager to see what they have to say and the happiness that came with it..

bas el kofta di is becoming too repetitive and tasteless.

 

A very harsh introduction to a more lenient deep-dive, I hope. Don’t get me wrong, the ads are not bad (not all of them, at least), and I actually enjoy them, but I’m just addressing the fact that life has to go on beyond Oprette el 7elm el 3arabi that we see every year.

If people see it coming already, you have less chances of scoring with them.

 

1.     Orange – جاري يا جاري

 

 

The closest to my heart, the one with the strongest insight; that while your neighbors are literally the closest people to you, yet you feel very distant to them.. So take Ramadan as a good chance to reconnect and get close to them.. Mixing the most prominent neighbor types (the noisy, the nosy, the grumpy, the silo-ed and the trouble maker) along with a personal favorite of mine; Hani Shenouda’s score forShams El Zanaty’s OST makes the ad an instant fan favorite (gotta give credit to my good friend Hisham Kharma for seeing the gem in this track and remixing it twice; a techno remix in 1998 and a tribal chillout version in 2017).

Maybe this feels a bit off Mobinil/Orange’s Ramadan look and feel of the past couple of years, we’ve seen them do their version of songs with an Egyptian taste, real people, real cast; real stories be it with Dayman Ma3 ba3d in 2012, Fa3el Khier in 2015, Mel madfa3 lel madfa3 in2016 and so on.. but with changes in communication management heads between telco’s, its normal to see a different flavor to what was originally a consistent brand tone.

 

2.     Vodafone – نجوم رمضان السنة دي

 

 

The buildup there was quite nice, when they released pre-Ramadan copies for Saad Samir, Ahmed Hegazy and Ahmed Fathy, then followed up with the full song showing us how the story builds up.

The link is nice, and the connection between teaser and revealer copies is quite neat honestly. But I’m not sure how are football players Ramadan’s stars if the World Cup starts on the first day of Eid, so why would I see them as Ramadan stars? They should be training in Ramadan.. lol

A bit of a distant link for me, but I won’t be too anal about it.

 

But as far as I’m concerned, it’s the same ad of the last 3 years, with just new faces, refresh your memory with below

ڤودافون، قوتك فى عيلتك رمضان 2015 –

 ڤودافون – العيلة الكبيرة رمضان 2016 -

 

3.     Etisalat – احنا مش بنهزر

 

 

Wallahi shakloko bet-hazzaro bel e3lan da..

The only thing that I see consistent in it is el mobalgha.. overdone in every way.. Random Ramadan stars overdoing everything in an overdone copy.. although Sherine Reda of course soft-spot gamed.. still doesn’t justify, I don’t like the ad nevertheless..

Also I am really, REALLY bothered by the fact that Mohamed Ramadan is being over glorified in every appearance, be it a movie, series or ad.. The guy is talented, gotta give him that, but he’s not God, because apparently that’s the direction we’re heading; being last in line-up of the ad, King Tut’s casket, the music crescendo, the lyrics.. la2 mesh Michael Jackson tale3 fel e3lan ya3ni..

In case you haven’t noticed, he referred to himself as possessing “شعبية إلهية” in the last copy

 

Also, what the f*** is wrong with Samira Said’s voice.. I was listening to it in the car and I thought it was a Minion sound effect.. howa fi eh?

 

4.     WE – Mobile Internet

 

 

Remember when I said not all ads are bad, this is the bad one.

I honestly have expected much more of them on their launch year, but looking at what they’ve done with their logo design for starters, then the Montakhab Airplane design (let alone the Salah fiasco), this is not too surprising to me now..

Anyway, let’s not grill them much, with the competition they’re up against, the ad will probably die out very soon.. And that is when competition is really bad this year, let’s hope they learn the lesson by the time competition get back in shape.

 

Brand specifics aside, and along from the repetitive song concept which I’m sure I made very clear, there are some other factors that I see are

 

Copy duration

 

Kheir ya gama3a.. shwaya shwaya you’ll stop competing in Lynx and Effies and go head to head in short movie festivals..

Copy durations are becoming TOO long.. 2 and 3 and 5 minutes are NOT OK..

What kind of story are you trying to tell anyway.

 

I don’t believe this is the biggest bang for your buck, in a country where there’s

a.  No TV rating system (in case you didnt know, TV ratings in Egypt have been suspended since May 2017).. Agencies have been sadly relying on Twitter to know the good programs; Twitter, a platform of around 2 million users in a country of 100+ million.. So you really don’t know if your ad if being viewed or not, just qualitative assurances.. and dont fool yourselves with trending reports and view counts on Youtube, you know its all paid, so its a show of who has more digital budgets, nothing else.

b.  An economic crash after floatation

c.  A generation of viewers who are not on TV in the first place, paying money for programs, platforms and bypasses to watch content without the interruption of your commercial messages, and if they sadly sit through it, either they skip it, watch the first 3-5 seconds of it or they watch it with sound off.

 

Copies should be crisp, to the point yet entertaining to the audience you’re addressing..

Over the past year, I’ve been in sessions with Google, Facebook and the likes talking about 6 second ads... and we’re serving 120 second++??

 

Literally money down the drain.. I’m sure there’s a lot more you can do with these production, celebrity royalties and airing budgets… a LOT more.

 

Choice of celebrities

 

When we were studying celebrity endorsement in marketing and advertising books, by definition the celebrity should

 

a.    Be unique in some aspect of his persona (look, character, attitude…something).. Johnny Depp with Dior Sauvage masalan.. perfect fit.

b.    Have something in common with the brand

c.    Add to the brand

d.    Most importantly he should not have done any advertising work with competition.. preferably no advertising at all kaman, then people would remember him for your brand only.

 

Look at the George Clooney-Nespresso partnership.. George Clooney has been doing Nespresso ads since 2006, so for 12 years he’s been consistently hammering on the Nespresso offering, taking it from a brand no one knew to a household name with a machine in most of their target audience’s homes.

He even took it a step further, George Clooney also serves as a member of the Nespresso Sustainability Advisory Board, collaborating on ideas and solutions towards improving the lives and futures of coffee farmers (check full story here).
So he literally became part of the company, because their agendas are so in line that he can confidently represent the company as part of his belief system and encourage people to buy its products because he trusts it so much.

 

Taking it closer to home, when Adel Imam introduced Vodafone’s “Power To you” concept in a 1 month stint that ended with the Jan 25 revolution (which I think was their strongest corporate copy to date), that was f***ing powerful, the biggest Middle Eastern star with the biggest Telco in the region, the marriage made sense…

 

Neboss b2a 3al konafa bel renga that we have here.. just topline examples, I’m sure there will be more if we dig deeper.

 

- Donia Samir Ghanem and Hend Sabry both being featured on Etisalat’s “2alo Magnoon” copy, then again in this year’s Orange copy.. 

- Hossam Ghali did a couple for Vodafone himself as part of Al Ahly (since VF is lead sponsor), then appeared solo in Orange.

- Zafer Abdin in Orange this year.. already was in OrangeEagle just a couple of months ago and previously playing the exact same character in Vodafone Him/Her a couple of years ago (the suit, the watch, the boat, the girl.. the whole shebang really, just with a different brand)…

- El King b2a qessa tania.. Mohamed Mounir, didn’t feature in one, but TWO competitor ads, he did “2alo Magnoon” also (which was massive because he never did ads before that, novelty factor again).. Bas el zaher el le3ba 3agabeto, cz Vodafone did a yearlong campaign with him before he featured on Orange’s ad this Ramadan… eh ya gama3a.. el brand maloosh ahl yes2alo 3aleih?

 

And I honestly don’t think its any of the celebrity’s faults.. at the end of the day its business for them.. if brand X comes and offers me money for representing their brand while knowing that I’ve already worked for brands Y and Z, then why would I care about your brand, if you apparently don’t.

Also one last thing… not everyone can sing guys, Nelly Karim was a pain to listen to..

 

Lack of brand role