Branded content/entertainment is still a new concept in the region. So our main challenge was to find a brave partner — a coffee chain that’s willing to modify the design of theircoffee cup sleeve and allow us to turn it into an advertising medium.

The challenge:To help Gulf News, the UAE’s leading newspaper, reach even more readers and convert them into subscribers.The idea and execution:Fresh news goes well with fresh coffee. Therefore, we adapted the coffee cup sleeve of Tim Hortons, a global coffee chain, into a new advertising medium and created the ‘Headline News’ cup sleeve.Every cup. Every hour. Every day. When Tim Hortons customers received a cup of coffee, they also received the headline of the hour, printed using a special printer that pulled out tweets from the Twitter account of Gulf News. The QR Code on the sleeve then directed them to the Gulf News’ website where they could read the full story.It allowed us to be the first throughout the day to deliver breaking news to potential subscribers, and make a meaningful connection with them.

Timing is everything. Therefore, we interacted with our potential subscribers at the time they normally read the newspaper — when they enjoy their morning coffee.

• We’re rolling out this project in Tim Hortons’ outlets across the UAE, and in 14 new outlets soon to be opened.• 1,440 headline tweets have been printed on more than 1.6m coffee cups to date.• More than 2,900 new Gulf News Twitter followers in the first 2 weeks of the campaign launch.• The traffic on the Gulf News website grew by 41%.• Subscription’s up by 2.8% so far.