For Home Centre, a furniture retailer in the Middle East, with retail stores shut due to COVID-19, budgets came to an absolute halt; just like for all retail brands.

Yet, with a total budget of only $50,000:

1. Home Centre won over Arab moms, through a strategic decision to change the “featured audience” to Arab single moms, thus appealing to Arab moms.

2. In doing so, Home Centre integrated a new conversation into culture and media, by challenging an untapped, deep-rooted cultural prejudice and taboo.

3. Therefore, we impacted media, perceptions, brand attributes, business growth and importantly, enduringly influenced culture.

Home Centre’s a homegrown home furniture and furnishings retailer from and across the Middle East.

It competes for regional market share with its biggest competitor - the well-known furniture brand from Sweden.

During COVID-19, while brick and mortar retail came to an abrupt standstill, e-commerce was growing and burgeoning in the Middle East, including in the home retail category.

Home Centre needed to earn attention and drive growth for its business through its e-commerce platform, during physical retail and mall lockdowns.

Objectives - Home Centre defined key growth objectives during July-September 2020 in the middle of COVID-19 lockdowns:

1) Brand Consideration: +10% to equalise with its Swedish competitor.

2) Brand Relevance: +25% to be more relevant to Arabs than its Swedish competitor.

3) Footfall (online + offline): +150% to get people visiting Home Centre online and offline to achieve the business goals.

4) Revenue: +50%.

5) Purchase Volumes: +50%.

To grow its business during COVID-19, Home Centre needed to define and target its primary buyers.

With 80% of its buyers being moms, and its primary target audience being Arab and expat Arab moms, during COVID-19, Home Centre wanted to appeal to Arab moms across the Middle East (its primary audience group).

Run-of-the-mill promotions drive short term sales spike in the home retail category in the Middle East. But to build brand resonance and brand value, Home Centre needed to be more appealing as a brand (not just a store).

Looking at research conducted into this audience, during COVID-19:

65% were paying more attention to what brands are saying.

72% preferred emotional stories.

83% wanted to associate with more purposeful brands.

95% of the work from that had earned their respect during Covid-19, did all of the above.

Home Centre needed to find the opportunity to do all of it.

Home Centre believes in ‘every home has its own unique story to tell.’

But there was one story not being told across homes in the Middle East.

According to Gallup, 15% of homes in the Middle East don’t have a father.

For context, US/Canada is at 19% and the global average is 13%.

Yet, single moms, remain a cultural taboo in Arab society, often, seen as having failed at being good wives to their husbands, or never being good enough to fill the shoes of an absent father to their children, or worse, including being wrongly judged (publicly in society as well as on social media) as immoral and adulterous.

So, they are never shown in advertising in the Middle East. Brands haven't dared.

We wanted to challenge that taboo, with Home Centre becoming the first brand in the Middle East to ever speak about, recognize and support single moms.

To shine the light on Arab single moms, supporting them, even if Arab society did not, we picked an occasion when homes with single moms are left out.

With 'A Dad's Job', we integrated a new conversation into culture and media, by tackling an untapped social and cultural insight, as we disrupted a conventionally- used but attention-worthy cultural occasion in the Middle East: Father's Day.

Because if single moms are doing a dad's job everyday, besides doing a mom's job, why don’t we celebrate and include their homes on a day we celebrate dads too?

We effectively integrated into channels used for Father's Day and transformed those channels in a disruptive manner, to instead challenge the cultural taboo around Arab single moms, in a year-long plan comprising initiatives across channels.

In turn, we included and integrated single moms into not just Father's Day, but also, into advertising, marketing and society.

“The first brand to recognise single moms in the Middle East.” (Arab Ad)

“A groundbreaking spot.” (Shoot Online)

“No other brand has dared to address these issues.” (Arab News)

“With 80% of buyers being moms, it has resonated not just with single moms but also, with moms across the region.” (Al Jadeed)

With a media and production budget of only $50,000:

1) 1.1 billion earned media impressions.

2) $3.72 million earned media value.

3) 102 million cross-platform organic views.

4) 63% of the region reached.

5) The positive sentiments earned for addressing the taboo of Arab single moms, overwhelmed the initial negativity, changing from 50% negative to 86% positive.

6) Triggered +512% conversations around Arab single moms.

Resultantly, the positive sentiment impacted the business 3-months post Father’s Day vs. 3-month period prior, during a crisis:

1) Consideration: +23%.

2) Relevance: +28%.

3) Footfall: +190%.

4) Revenue: +120%.

5) Purchases: +170%.

For Home Centre, with retail stores being forced to shut due to COVID-19, budgets had come to an absolute halt, just like for ALL retailers in the Middle East.

We had a low budget of $25,000 to shoot the film (Director and DOP fees: Pro bono owing to the topic, Production costs including crew and incentives for single moms: $10,000, Lighting and equipment rentals: $10,000, Post-production and editing: $5,000).

And we had only $25,000 for media and production of social content. We worked with that low budget through an effective mix of owned, shared and earned media (courtesy the significant media and PR value the initiative’s provocative nature generated).

It helped that Home Centre has a network of ‘buyers’ who work on its furnishing items, so we could procure (as part of existing contracts) what we wanted to produce, beyond the film, such as products we created for single moms.