A nation’s biggest failure is when it forgets what it’s capable of. In 2014, a dark cloud loomed over Lebanon once more. Media outlets competed to paint a dark vision of the future, and the people followed suit. The Lebanese were forgetting what they’re truly capable of, and we made it our mission to remind them.

Through an experiential launch event and TV/online film, we reignited a spark in the dormant flames. It was a month long digital activation, generating thousands of crowd sourced messages of hope paired with a real time on the ground activation that fully awoke the Lebanese Flames and transformed the conversations of despair into hope.

In total, we reached 14,189,000 users in Lebanon and 20 other countries, collected 38,400,000 impressions, over 440,000 Actions, 306,022 total video views and a total of $766,000 in earned media. Mostly, over 2,500 user messages of hope generated. Hundreds where transformed into campaign visuals used across media.

On January 1st, Lebanon’s main TV talk show dedicated an entire episode to the brand, with its content articulated around 5 key campaign visuals, which also branded the entire show. The show’s name was also changed from the ‘The Republic of Failure’ to the ‘Republic of Hope’. 4 publications also changed their editorial content to promote hope in the country.

In a saturated market (source AC Nielsen):

• Johnnie Walker value share grew by an exceptional 19.99%, representing 6.54 percentage points ahead of category. The results were celebrated by the client as the exceptional growth in value share indicates a “premiumisation” of the market (from Red Label to Black Label) which links back directly to our campaign that had Black Label at its center.

• Moreover Black Label value share grew by 31%, 10 percentage points faster than the category, while Red Label volume share grew by 5.38 percentage points ahead of category .

Moreover, post-campaign research showed that: about three quarters of consumers found that the campaign was appealing, that the campaign had a strong impact on consumers’ perceptions of Johnnie Walker, and that it managed to emphasize Johnnie Walker’s uniqueness by helping people differentiate the brand from all other whiskies in the market.

Finally, research confirmed that the campaign has helped support the brand’s fundamental equities of progressiveness, sophistication, status and modernity.