How a commercial that was hated by the client, focus groups and consultants alike won a Lynx grand prix. Ali Ali is creative director at Elephant Cairo
“Open on a young man walking into a living room. Speechless and overwhelmed, he holds a retro-looking laser gun in his right hand. His family sits there in the living room, waiting for him. Almost instantly, he starts taking them out one-by-one with his laser gun. He turns everything and everyone he shoots into bags of Kalbaz and then finally sits down to enjoy the crisps. Voiceover: Kalbaz. Finish them!
This is how Maged and I presented Kalbaz to the management team of Egypt Foods some 11 months ago. The meeting took place at a marketing consultancy office, ironically named Foresight. Acting as the advertising and marketing arm for Egypt Foods, they were there to guide and advise. Everyone in the room liked our scripts. It was either that or the fact that we presented them with nothing else. They were sold on this one. We had them at laser guns. They heard laser guns and thought Star Wars. I’m not quite sure they fully grasped the idea, but I do know that when they bought it, they were thinking predominantly about how laser guns would work well on their 12-year-old target.
And here starts what turned out to be an interesting misunderstanding. Here we were presenting a very silly idea – and intending an even sillier execution for it – and they took it, well, seriously.
Cut to the PPM (or pre-production meeting).
The PPM went surprisingly well, which also means it went fast. Things were straightforward and not many questions were asked. I remember being super excited about the wardrobe as I’d brought back and selected each piece myself from a used clothing shop in Camden. And as I was showing it to them, I realised no one was interested. We also showed them the laser gun, which we had designed and produced in London, and that, they loved.
Cut to our post-PPM discussion.
The one question they had after the PPM was: “Why is everyone so old? We are talking to 12-year-olds, why not have 12-year-old boys use the gun? Why are there old men in our ads?” We tried to explain that all those factors were essential to keeping the ads silly and stupid. But that didn’t rub them the right way. We thought silly stupid was great, the way the Skittles ads are great. They thought silly stupid was just that: stupid. I guess this is the advantage (or rather disadvantage) of not having account people or suits present in these meetings. Any junior account person would have called time-out to clear the issue and resolve the misunderstanding; to make sure we are all ‘aligned’. Had that person been present, I don’t think we would have picked up the grand prix at the Lynx.
Cut to our first presentation.
It is rather hard to forget the look on their faces when we shared the first edits. They were dumbstruck, confused. But mostly, they were disappointed. They hated the films. No one laughed. Thankfully, the product was out and the media was booked in advance so they were forced to air the spots. In the meantime, they would run it through research and test it on a dozen focus groups. The ads failed miserably on both fronts. I remember being at Foresight one night and telling them “but you guys are all too old to appreciate this humour, bring me a younger audience!” And they did. They brought in a group of fresh grads that worked at Foresight. They all said the same thing: “It’s not funny, it’s just weird, we have no idea what it’s trying to say.” Humiliated and embarrassed, I got up and left.
Everyone at Egypt Foods hated the campaign; everyone at Foresight seemed to hate it as well. Maged and I had failed. Two days later they pulled it off the air, it failed research, they cancelled our cheque, and Kalbaz officially became our biggest flop. We asked them to let us post the spots on Facebook and we’d monitor it. I promised them it would go viral. They wouldn’t listen.
Enter the jingle.
After two months of trying to fix Kalbaz to no avail, something had to be done. So we had a conciliation meeting. Like a treaty. And some guy at Foresight suggested we produce a jingle. They were experts in jingles and jingles can never go wrong. Ours did. We had never written or produced a jingle. But this time we did. We had to. We managed to produce a jingle. A Kalbaz jingle. In under one week. And Zanad agreed to do the animation for us for free, just to save our asses. And guess what? They hated it.
Enter the Lynx awards.
I asked the guys at Egypt Foods if we can at least enter the ads for consideration. By now they had some sympathy for us, and thinking it would never win, they said “Sure! We’ll even pay for the entries.”
Probably, Kalbaz wasn’t the finest work at the Lynx this year. I thought Cono’s ‘Lion’ spot (another Egypt Foods brand) was great. I laughed at the Molto Camel spot, and then there was JWT’s ‘Selawa’ campaign for Vodafone and Impact BBDO’s ‘Cheyef 7alek’. I fell in love with both while judging at the Cristals. All great work, all worthy of the grand prix. Perhaps Kalbaz didn’t deserve to win, but surely more than anything else, and in some form of divine justice, it needed to win.
Kalbaz winning came as a pleasant surprise. Maged and I had begun to think that perhaps our client was right. The grand prix has restored our faith in new ideas. Fresh ideas. It has proved to our client that what makes them uncomfortable is exactly what makes work good. It’s no good showing them work they’ve seen before. Everyone and everything tried to shoot down this campaign. And now, because of the Lynx, Egypt Foods are going to air the ads again. For it doesn’t matter who you show the ads to, and it doesn’t matter what they say. What matters is your gut feeling, your intuition. You must always listen to that voice. Because, more often than not, it’s probably right.”