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Campaign ME
27-05-2025
- Business
- Campaign ME
D&AD 2025: MENA takes home 17 Pencils
Agencies and brands across the MENA region earned 17 Pencils at the 2025 D&AD Awards, with wins across design, direction, cinematography, typography and more. Held annually in London, the awards celebrate global creative excellence across advertising and design disciplines. This year, only three Black Pencils – the competition's highest honour – were awarded globally. In total, 668 Pencils were handed out: 3 Black,3 White, 48 Yellow, 176 Graphite, 434 Wood and 4 Future Impact. Regional winners from this year represented the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Morocco, with the work emerging from campaigns for Riyadh Season, NBA India, Babyshop, Volkswagen Middle East and King Faisal Specialist Hospital, among others. UAE's wins at the D&AD 2025 awards From visual innovation to emotionally resonant brand work, UAE-based agencies earned multiple honours. Leo Burnett Dubai won three Graphite Pencils and three Wood Pencils for 'The Great Indian Dunk', an NBA India campaign that captured real, unscripted moments of Indian youth in mid-air poses, drawing parallels with the iconic dunks of basketball legends. Publicis Middle East picked up two Wood Pencils: One for ColourCheck, a product design innovation for Babyshop and Moorfields Eye Hospitals that used a coloured pencil set to discreetly detect types of colour blindness in children. Another for Strangers, a heartfelt campaign for King Faisal Specialist Hospital, in the Health & Wellbeing – Film category. Cheil MEA was recognised with a Wood Pencil for Type Design, for Written by GTI, a campaign that created Arabic typography from the skids and drifts of a Volkswagen GTI. TypeType, a design agency with roots based in Kazakhstan and the UAE, won a Wood Pencil for TT Biersal, a display sans serif typeface with unconventional modular cuts and asymmetrical angles, recognised in the Typeface Family category. Saudi in spotlight Saudi Arabia emerged as a creative force at this year's awards, largely driven by the General Entertainment Authority's cinematic sports campaigns through BigTime Creative Shop. Everything or Nothing, created for the Crawford vs. Madrimov fight, won a Graphite Pencil in Cinematography – Short Form, showcasing the fighters' parallel journeys through emotive, high-impact storytelling. A second version of the campaign also won a Wood Pencil for Colour Grading – Visual Effects. BigTime's Obsession campaign for Usyk vs. Fury 2 picked up two Wood Pencils – for Direction – Short Form and Use of Emerging Technology – Visual Effects. It combined surreal visuals, face-replacement tech, and a haunting Kylie Minogue soundtrack to depict the fighters' mental fixation on one another. The 4th Judge, an AI-powered boxing scoring system introduced during the same rematch, won a Wood Pencil in Experiential – Use of Emerging Tech. Kings Slam – Call of the Kings, a VFX-heavy tennis trailer featuring Djokovic, Nadal, Alcaraz, and others, received a Wood Pencil in Animation – 3D Digital for its bold rendering of each player's persona across dramatic, surreal environments. Joining the ranks of UAE and KSA, Morocco also bagged a pencil with The Call of Water, a national awareness campaign by the Ministry of Equipment and Water, crafted by director Alexandre Lucain. The poetic, emotionally resonant film won a Wood Pencil in Cinematography – Short Form. In total, the MENA region earned 4 Graphite and 13 Wood Pencils across categories including Film, Press & Outdoor, Animation, Typography, Graphic Design, Product Design, Cinematography and Experiential at the 2025 D&AD Awards.
Arabian Post
03-05-2025
- Politics
- Arabian Post
Season of madness in the age of terror
Matein Khalid He was a handsome young Gen-Z kid from Dubai, son of a Sindhi family long settled in the UAE, only a few years older than my twins. I can just imagine him as a toddler, all decked out in Babyshop diapers, then a little guy having his birthday bash with his classmates at McDonalds or Kidzania, as an IHS student on a school bus in Oud Metha Road. Then a young college graduate, I can imagine his parents' sheer joy when he married his beautiful bride and who would have ever thought that their last picture together would be a testament to a lost youth and a doomed love. He made one fatal mistake that cost him his life and a lifetime of grief for all those who loved him in a life cut short by merciless animals with guns who decided that he and 25 other innocent human beings must die, just because they hated his religion. Neeraj Udhwani's life was stolen by a cabal of terrorists in an exquisite Kashmir resort town called Pahalgam, his murder, an act of political symbolism in the lethal game of nations by murderers who have broken every shred of decency that defines the human condition. Dr. Lambert, my old prof., used to say 'there is one compelling reason why we should study international politics' – 'this stuff kills'. Neeraj is with God now, as is Dr. Lambert. RIP. The powerless have always been defined in terms of the powerful in India and Pakistan, two states created amid the bloodlust of one of history's most obscene spasms of violence in August 1947, the summer of Partition. Kashmir was the jewel that both successor states to the British Empire wanted to annex to their tarnished, bloodstained crown in the name of a phony Two Nation Theory. In an ancient land that encompassed a thousand nations, 330 million Gods, religious/cultural syncretism and a society that is a laboratory of human diversity and communal coexistence. See also Trump's Tariff Gamble: A Path to Global Recession? Yet as in 1965, 1971, 1999, 2001, 2008, 2016 and 2019, India and Pakistan are mired in the pantomime of war that will claim countless more lives on both sides just to appease the sacred fury of mindless nationalism. 25 centuries ago great souls like Mahavira and the Gautama Buddha walked the face of the earth and we now live in the age of space travel, cloud computing and artificial intelligence. Yet we have not lost the primal urge to kill and murder to sacrifice the young and the innocent in the name of vengeful deities, like the tribe of hereditary stranglers known as thuggis who committed mass murder of strangers on the remote roads of late Mughal India in the name of the Goddess Kali. Why does this undercurrent of bestial violence disfigure the kaleidoscope of the subcontinent's history? Why was the tryst with destiny so hollow and the freedom at midnight such a cruel illusion if the endgame was to have midnight's grandchildren massacred in terrorist outrages from Peshawar to Colaba, Kashmir to Balochistan, Dhaka to Jaffna? Modi will launch a retaliatory strike and General Munir, the Luminous One, has every political incentive to climb up the escalatory ladder to whip up the nationalist zealots who legitimize his praetorian regime. Balakot was a close call but sanity prevailed on both sides before either reached the point of no return. Yet who knows if a miss calculation now could lead to a tactical nuclear strike by a Pakistan high command that has never abandoned a first use capability doctrine? Will the ultimate act of terror be a mushroom cloud over a subcontinental battlefield or God forbid an entire city via a nuclear weapon fired in blind anger or primal fear? If this is freedom at midnight, India and Pakistan can have it. May the Gods destroy the miasma of evil that swirls in the netherworld of our ancestral motherlands' pathological power politics. John Lenon was so right in Imagine, all we are saying is, give peace a chance! See also How Trump's tariff war dismantled US trade credibility Also published on Medium. Notice an issue? Arabian Post strives to deliver the most accurate and reliable information to its readers. If you believe you have identified an error or inconsistency in this article, please don't hesitate to contact our editorial team at editor[at]thearabianpost[dot]com. We are committed to promptly addressing any concerns and ensuring the highest level of journalistic integrity.
Campaign ME
08-04-2025
- Business
- Campaign ME
MENA region is leveraging sustainability for effectiveness: WARC report
The MENA region is showing great opportunity for engaging on sustainability, and is making the case that a focus on sustainability – even during uncertain times – is effective. A new report titled Sustainability in the WARC Effective 100, published by the World Advertising Research Centre (WARC) in partnership with global sustainability marketing expert Thomas Kolster, explores how sustainability work – whether defined as social or environmental – shows up in ten years of the Effective 100 Rankings (2014-24). The research evaluates a decade of most effective campaigns – and demonstrates how sustainability punches above its weight. The report analysed 10 years of WARC Rankings Effectiveness 100 data to understand how social and environmental sustainability campaigns have changed over the also identifies what sustainability messaging looks like in different regions, which categories are most active in sustainability, and showcases some of the winning work from the Effectiveness 100 rankings from 2014-2024. The report highlights common themes that emerged from the analysis and offers lessons about how to be effective in this space. In the global research the Middle East region has 23 campaigns featured across the decade compared with North America with 73, which has the highest number of campaigns featured. 'This testament to the effectiveness of thinking outside the box and how purpose leads to more effective campaigns and increased profits,' Thomas Kolster, Founder of Goodvertising, told Campaign Middle East. Kolster added, 'Many of this decade's most groundbreaking campaigns succeed not by exploiting people's fleeting desires, but by boldly addressing their deeper, more profound human needs. Social sustainability and environmental sustainability campaigns cut through the noise because they dare to address what truly matters to people.' The most highly ranked social and environmental campaigns, (Mean: 2014-2024), included: Vodafone: How to make small seem big Rank: 1 (2014) Home Centre: A Dad's Job Rank: 2 (2022) Lifebuoy: Help a child reach 5 Rank: 4 (2015) From the Middle East region, children's retailed Babyshop: Making Arab Mums More Visible in Culture – Rank: 6 (2022) was also featured in the research. With the intent to build emotional affinity with customers and to earn the respect of Arab mothers, Babyshop reformed the Arabic word for 'parenthood' – which really meant 'fatherhood' – and created a new word that incorporated both the mother and the father, 'Al Umobuwah.' The word was launched on Mother's Day with an online film, and a new clothing collection. Following the campaign brand love was up with 42 per cent and new customers increased with 6.3 per cent. Importantly, the initial 50 per cent negative sentiments towards the word changed to positive. As a result, the campaign successfully reached people, culture and business. The top takeaways of the WARC research Social sustainability themes underpin effective work: Work with a socially progressive theme shows up strongly in 10 years of the WARC Effectiveness 100. Over 10 years, a quarter (250) of awarded Effectiveness 100 campaigns had a social sustainability theme. Female empowerment and challenging bias are key themes: Social sustainability themes prioritise female empowerment, breaking down stigmas, public health, or tackling poverty. Fewer environmental themes across 10 years: Environmental sustainability campaigns are less prominent across the 10-year analysis. Michelob Ultra's Contract for Change in the US, Tesco's Unforgettable Bag in Asia and Intermarché in France are stand-out environment campaigns. Reducing waste is a dominant environmental theme: Environmental themes prioritise reducing waste, supporting local businesses, and finding new routes to growth via the circular economy. Toiletries, cosmetics and retail sectors lean into social issues: In Asia and North America the toiletries and cosmetics sector has the highest volume of sustainability campaigns. In Europe, the retail sector has the highest volume of sustainability campaigns across 10 years. Highlight the customer benefit: Transform social or environmental issues into tangible benefits for your target audience. For example, Dove effectively translates the broader issue of Real Beauty into a customer benefit, such as boosting confidence. Having a core issue, and supporting it over time, is key: Brands like Dove and SK-II see long-term success by consistently addressing social issues over time. Consistency doesn't mean boring. Updating creative work with fresh insights keeps it relevant. Apply creativity to find novel solutions: Use creativity to develop innovative solutions to challenges, rather than simply raising awareness about an issue. For example, Intermarché reduced food waste in the supermarket sector while Back Market created a new category.
