Sky News Arabia and FP7/MENA make history at the 2013 GEMAS Effies Awards in Dubai

 

The honor is an historic one as Effies are usually awarded to FMCGs, banks or many other consumer product-focused sectors. To win a marketing effectiveness award for a news channel is unprecedented in the award’s nine-year history and is testament to the superb understanding of Sky News Arabia’s vision by FP7/MENA and is tangible proof of their longstanding partnership and shared ethos of excellence.

 

“This is a significant win for us because on one hand it is testament to the effectiveness of our marketing strategy and the ensuing campaign that FP7/MENA developed and on another, it marks the first time that a breaking news channel in the region has bagged the award. Although Sky News Arabia was launched less than two years ago and at a time when the market was oversaturated with news channels, we have been able to identify a value proposition for the Arab viewer and more importantly, communicate it effectively to a point where we have driven measurable and record results in viewership across all our platforms both traditional and digital. We took the channel’s “Now and From Everywhere” and turned it into something a lot more meaningful that just a slogan; we assigned ownership of the term to the brand and translated it into effective applications across a vast array of communication channels including print, outdoor and digital,” said Yazeed Ali Yasin, Marketing Manager at Sky News Arabia.

 

“When producing the television ads for the campaign, our biggest concern was to maintain the same consistency and believability found in the Print, Digital and Outdoor applications that were developed by FP7/MENA, and achieving this only by using existing footage, keeping it genuine and unchanged as an event or a real piece of news. The production of the spots was completed internally using local talents with international standards, a remarkable attention to detail and a strong commitment to the brand,” added Habib Feghali, Head of Creative at Sky News Arabia.

 

Launched in 2004 to encourage international best practice in marketing in the Middle East the GEMAS were awarded on the sole premise of proven marketing

 

effectiveness based on the clearly demonstrable, quantifiable and transparent

campaign results. The GEMAS Effie Mena Awards were launched to recognise, educate and encourage effectiveness among the marketing communications industry across the Middle East. They combine the regional marketing effectiveness awards – the GMR Effectiveness in Marketing Awards (GEMAS)- and the internationally renowned Effies.

 

“‘This is an award that requires true partnership, trust and confidence between a client and an agency. It’s real work, produced for a real brief on behalf of this very real news channel. As an agency, daring is in our DNA and it is a credit to our partnership with Sky News Arabia that we worked together to produce such an outstanding campaign. When the most effective creative agency works with the most effective 24-hour Arabic news channel, we knew that something special would be the result. We are proud to work with them and look forward to many more years of effective results,” said Tarek Miknas, CEO of FP7/MENA.