Raasuk - Diversion

Background

In a time of turmoil in the Middle East, anodyne Arab music did not reflect the real situation in the region. So when Mashrou' Leila, an independent Lebanese band, asked Leo Burnett Beirut to promote their third album Raasuk (They made you dance) both the agency and the band saw it as an opportunity for music to express how many Lebanese felt.

Idea

The oxygen music needs if it is to breathe these days is video. So a video was created for one of the tracks on Mashrou' Leila's album, 'Lil Watan' ('For The Country') a political song which raised the subject of media distortion.

The lyrics suggested that the media was happier reporting on distant typhoons than on the storm brewing that could blow away the entire country.

The video set out to distract the viewer in exactly the same way mainstream media was distracting the people from what was happening. A belly dancer swayed and turned in front of the camera so that the words became secondary to the dance.

It was released exclusively on YouTube since that was where the target audience were most likely to see it.

Results

Almost a month after its release the video had earned over 100,000 views. It had also scored 4,310 likes across YouTube and Facebook, 725 comments and over 280 shares to this date. But reach was not limited to social media; the campaign received an outstanding $740,000 in earned media across local and international media. Among the notable international sources are The BBC, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, and Te*tu. The biggest achievement of the campaign was not just quantitative: the campaign acted as an alarm, awakening an apathetic Middle Eastern youth that is anaesthetised by mainstream and disappointed by an aborted Arab Spring.

Our Thoughts

Last year, ‘Dumb Ways To Die’ showed how music is a brilliant way to communicate; and how important YouTube can be as a channel to reach the young.

At the heart of this idea is a simple insight: busy, self-important people (anyone over the age of 30!) simply don’t listen. Music is the preserve of the young. So deliberately creating a smokescreen for the lyrics (which, incidentally, was also the subject of the song) was an irony only the young would have understood.

This is subtlety you don’t often associate with advertising. In fact, this is a sort of advertising you don’t associate with advertising either. But then Lebanon is not a normal country and Leo Burnett Beirut is a rather extraordinary agency.