We teamed up with Poupee Couture’s Roula Ghalayini, a local designer renowned for pushing fashion boundaries within the context of being an Arab woman, who agreed to bring to life the winning handbag design.Women were invited to upload their designs. They could begin from scratch or assemble their creation using templates on our microsite, which was hosted on Maktoob, the Arab world’s No 1 website. The competition was promoted with banners on Maktoob, on YouTube and on Facebook, where people could share their designs and interact with the designer.And around the microsite we provided links to messages about Silk-Epil and information about hair removal, which women could access in their own time when the messages would not be embarrassing.

In only four weeks, 1,000 designs were created and uploaded by local women, and half of these shared their design with friends. Their contact details provided a new marketing database, and they were re-contacted with more information about Silk-Epil.The campaign led to a sales increase of 19% and volume share increase of 28% versus the previous half-year.Silk-Epil’s brand manager called it “a showcase of how digital is opening up new ways to keep our market-leading brand relevant”.