Starcom MediaVest Group wins Gold Effie for Emirates Airline campaign

The award ceremony - held at the Armani Hotel on 21st November 2012 - saw SMG take home a Gold- the highest honor in the Travel, Tourism and Transportation category for the group's cutting-edge media campaign, which achieved a staggering 158% uplift in brand favorability across the BBC audience and delivered an overall campaign ROI of $10.66.

"I would like to thank Emirates Airline for entrusting us with and empowering us to produce award-winning content," said John Antoniades, Chief Executive Officer of SMG MENA. "For this campaign, SMG coordinated 27 local media plans, working with creative entities in over 20 different languages, across multiple platforms and with a number of agency and supplier stakeholders. It is always so rewarding and gratifying to realize the significant business impact of a media campaign. We are so honored to receive such a prestigious award; it serves as an emblem of recognition and reflects the innovative creativity of our team."

Indeed, the campaign's ability to ignite international conversations across a variety of media platforms - including the BBC, CNN and Yahoo! - is what garnered it immense popularity. The project succeeded in building virtual bridges between people and places as well as cultures and ideas, thanks to engaging and quirky content, a bespoke tab called 'Inspired Culture' and a BBC series entitled Collaboration of Cultures.

The campaign also formed a dedicated community of Globalistas - from across the world - involving them in a slew of artistic collaborations centering on coffin art, interpretative Bollywood dance and millinery.

SMG also won two Silver awards for Adidas 'Unleash Deadly' and Emirates NBD 'Pay Yourself First' campaigns. In addition to twelve short-listed entries, this success is in line with the agency's standing as the most awarded media agency in the region. SMG was the only media agency to win Gold at the event and did so with one of the highest rankings in the 'Effie Global Effectiveness' index for the region compared to all other creative and media agencies.