Today in Lebanon, there are thousands of intellectuals and underground artists vainly trying to showcase and share their cultural thoughts and work to the nation, the region and the world. Sadly, the audience is focused on sharing meaningless content instead bringing Lebanese Online culture to a new low.

Produced in half a day, “I Love Bananas” by Zeezee M became the most viewed YouTube video in the history of Lebanon in less than a week, with an average of 10,000 views per hour, an over 1 million views overall.

When the actress revealed the nature of the premeditated stunt, she proved to the nation that degrading online content was getting more visibility than true culture.

Simultaneously, Sa2afetna was launched, a cultural Facebook page providing users with relevant cultural content that is truly worth sharing and debating. The leading TV station has taken the pledge to shed light on true talents and support them by giving them TV and radio platforms to express their art with greater visibility.

The wake-up call was endorsed by 2 TVCs and a nationwide OOH campaign.

Online, fake scandalous banners redirected users to our cultural page.

On ground, branded cultural corners were installed in all Virgin Megastores, encouraging people to enjoy a good read and music for free.

With millions of social media impressions, thousands of Lebanese joining the page and sharing its rich content, a cultural movement was born.

The Zeezee M video was launched from an official ZeeZee M account, started gathering views at the rate of 10,000 views per hour in a country as tiny as Lebanon. The online engagement was triggered instantly and the major breakthrough in terms of views and shares was when another leading TV station mentioned the clip on its news website to criticize the level of mediocrity the art scene had reached.

After one week of ongoing interaction and debate fueled by sarcasm, admiration and hate the reveal harnessed an unprecedented viewership rate on MTV, and the cultural FB page was launched to the whole nation, capitalizing on the momentum of the big declaration. Simultaneously, 2 TVCs and an OOH campaign supported the launch, making the campaign the talk of the town, praised by multiple bloggers and journalists from various media channels in addition to the snowball effect created by online users.

Within 10 days of the stunt launch, the video had gone viral beyond international borders as it was viewed in 199 countries to date. It triggered a national debate, covered by all TV stations and spurred by millions of online users.

The total number of views for the video clip exceeded 1,292,000 views across all platforms, to date.

The page gained over 20,000 fans organically within 10 days.

The fake ads resulted in an outstanding CTR of 28.978% for the most performing ad.

The video ads achieved a CTR of 17.041%

The hashtag of the prime time TV talk show trended on twitter on the night of the reveal, an unprecedented event that proved that all eyes were on the so-called actress, and they consequently unanimously assisted to the reveal and the Facebook page launch. The campaign earned 3.2 Million dollars in free media, propelling the PR campaign nationwide.

The wake-up call that was intended was reflected by the nature of the online debate that extended all over the campaign period.

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OMD Rachid El Khazen Director-Planner Rachid.ElKhazen@omd.com