Situation: The UAE didn’t just face the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, it also grappled with a cyber pandemic. Phishing attacks increased by a whopping 250%, with 600,000 attacks reported in Q2 alone.

Brief: Build on Emirates NBD’s awareness approach from the previous year and cover topics beyond just banking fraud. Take a more educational yet entertaining approach to highlight the new Covid-19 frauds and protect people against them.

Objectives:

1. Reach most of the population of the UAE with the main message.

2. Establish Emirates NBD as a bank that is at the forefront of tackling fraud.

3. Engage with audiences across all possible touchpoints.

We wanted to showcase to people how being inattentive and careless on the internet can make a fraudster’s job easy. So, we created a fictional character named James Jefferson who claims to be an artist and a bestselling author of the book How to Grow Rich During the Pandemic. He is a mysteriously wealthy man who leads a lavish life – as is evident from his Instagram page. Later, it is revealed how he generates his wealth – by posing as a banker, owner of a charity, CEO of a company, vaccine provider, etc. and tricking unsuspecting people into sharing their bank account details before proceeding to steal all their money.

People trust influencers in the UAE. So, to teach them about the tricks fraudsters use to cheat them, we decided to go for one of the biggest influencers in the UAE, Kris Fade. His sense of humour, reach, and clean public image made him the ideal face of our Insta Live game SPOT THE FRAUDSTER.

The campaign was launched on Feb 13, 2021, and is still ongoing, with the latest execution released last March. In the past year, the campaign has evolved to cover hero content, a series of masterclass videos, a paperback, and ebook, a podcast with 6 episodes, a 13 week live and interactive game show, an AR filter, and Jame's Jefferson’s very own website where people could take the masterclasses, listen to the podcasts and buy copies of the book.

Spot The fraudster reached almost 2 million people through its run of 13 weeks and alerted people about 39 different types of frauds. Impressions: 2.2M. Views: 208K. Engagement: 33.9K