Judges Comments
Branded Entertainment Award
Winner: Amanda Turnbull, Vice President & General Manager, Discovery, UAE
Amanda and her team looked to bring the key elements of the brands to life for core consumers:
- Fatafeat: In the conservative Muslim world, food is a safe space for women to participate in publicly. They are keen to learn and value the heritage of their food as a way of preserving their history in a fast changing region.
- DKids: Children are hugely important in the Middle East, a booming market and, again, a route by which Muslim mothers are happy to engage and interact with brands.
- Discovery Channel: There is a huge government focus on the STEM subjects, and Discovery Channel is able to bring these to life in ways very few other brands are able to do.
The rolling experiential campaign, led by Amanda Turnbull, has created a significant halo effect that has allowed us to maintain or increase both our affiliate revenue and our ad sales (ad sales in MENA are +2.8% year on year in a tough market).
By going out into the region, Discovery have connected with local populations. Although in the GCC there are 300 million native Arabic speakers and Discovery brands are predominantly English-speaking, through the consistent branded entertainment efforts, Discovery Channel has recognition of 7.8/10 according to the 2017 Ovum TMT GCC Intelligence report.