3 Ways with...Filming in Dubai

With Dubai Lynx running this week from March 5-8, what better time to look at the many ways the city itself has featured in advertising? From a magical land of tall glass buildings and a million lights to the everyday life of the city experienced by its residents, we look at commercials set in the UAE’s capital (including some of last year’s Dubai Lynx winners) from brands like HSBC and Volkswagen, as well as agencies including JWT and Leo Burnett.

1. Dubai: World of Wonder

In the western imagination, we still think of the city as it is in Arabian Nights, both the ancient stories and the song from Aladdin; that is, as a kind of desert paradise. This view obviously has its problems, but regional brands have had no problems playing into this stereotype in advertising tourist destinations.

This strategy can be most clearly seen in Smart Migration, made by JWT Dubai for resort Atlantis the Palm. The closing slogan says it all; ‘check into another world’. Among shots of the staggering grand resort, the ad shows people migrating like birds to the resort’s restaurants, waterpark, and aquarium.

Continuing this sense of visitors to Dubai being fishes out of water, Dubai International Airport present an ad featuring a bird out of water. In Fly Like a Penguin from Hometown in London, they show the wonders of Dubai via a penguin visiting the airport of his way to hotter climates, treating himself to a sauna and a little sushi.

2. Dubai: Cultural Melting Pot

A world away from the palatial resorts and tourist traps is a real Dubai, a multicultural place of many ethnic groups. Brands have had much success, both with consumers and at Dubai Lynx, with ads focused on specific ethnic groups or other identity categories.

Perhaps most successful of all of these was Tropa for Life, made by Leo Burnett Dubai for telecommunications brand Du. Winner of a gold award at Lynx for its use of music, it aimed to sell a phone packaged tailored to the country’s 800,000 Filipinos through a rap song about the benefits of being in a ‘tropa’, Tagalog slang for a squad or group. The song itself became a huge viral sensation, and ended up getting huge radio play from an ethnic group who took it on as a slogan.

Targeting a much larger population – the women of Dubai and the UAE as a whole – Maggi Diaries won gold in branded content and entertainment at last year’s Lynx for Publicis Middle East. A branded content series, it followed women escaping the confines of their city via food, be it by opening a restaurant for women or finding joy in tea picking. Now running over two series, the content has empowered women across Dubai and beyond.

3. Dubai: City of Cars

If Hollywood according to La La Land is a ‘city of stars’, then Dubai is a city of cars. Vehicle ownership has doubled over the past 8 years to 1.4 million, leading to typical city problems of traffic and abandoned vehicles on a fairly epic scale.

Winner of a gold, silver, and bronze at the 2016 Dubai Lynx, Abandoned Lives by Mullenlowe MENA took a new spin on a very Dubai problem; that 3000 cars are abandoned in the city every year. The ad linked this very visible problem with one less noticeable – that of abandoned pets. For the viral stunt, they hooked up animal noises to these cars, sticking information about the pets to the cars for people who go to investigate.

With increased traffic comes increased difficulties crossing the road, especially a problem by schools. Soho Square Dubai and Volkswagen aimed to find a solution for this problem with Human Crossing. For this, school children were given a Volkswagen-branded tag for their backpacks which meant that at set crossing points their name would appear as they cross, giving a human face to the child trying to cross the road.

If you want to read more about Dubai, check out shots issue 170 for a Dubai-focused feature.