We used social media to invite Emirati youth to share their original photos depicting the festive spirit of National Day in the UAE. Entries were submitted via Twitter or Instagram using the #ENBDNationalDay hashtag. Every time a user snapped a picture on Instagram, the cover photo of Emirates NBD’s facebook page changed in real-time. Next, we took the whole Instagram experience from the virtual to the physical world by creating a real-world Instagram exhibition. Emirates NBD’s biggest branch was turned into a pop-up photo gallery for 2 weeks. And the bank’s customers became the surprise audience. 41 entries, to celebrate 41 years of the UAE, were selected for participation. Visitors were even handed out real-world likes & hearts that they could stick onto images. Emirates NBD gave Insta-artists their moment of fame as well as gave them something more to brag about.

Despite the fact that the photos needed to be taken in 1 day (December 2nd) we received an overwhelming response of a 1000 photos**. Those 1000 represented 8% of the total photos related to the UAE 41st national day on Instagram, which means there was an 8% participation rate that is never seen before on any submission based competition (benchmark 3 to 4% on Facebook). Nearly 8,000 people were exposed to the exhibition during the course of two weeks after the National day. *** Moreover the exhibition made news worth USD 410,000 over just 4 weeks. ****