JEDDAH, 8 February 2006 — Saudi Creative Communications Services (SACCS TRACCS), one of the region’s largest and fastest growing PR consultancies, won the gold award for producing the “Best PR Event in the Middle East for 2005” at the first annual Campaign Middle East Awards held in Dubai last week.
The award was only one of two awards for PR presented during an evening dominated by advertising industry accolades. SACCS TRACCS had also been short-listed as “Agency of the year,” the only other PR award of the night.
The event that brought home gold for SACCS TRACCS was a breakthrough campaign initiated by Ta’awanuh, the corporate social responsibility (CSR) division of Al-Baik Food Systems for Al-Baik restaurants, Saudi Arabia’s major fast-food restaurant chain. Al Baik partnered with Coca-Cola.
SACCS TRACCS Managing Director Sarah Al-Ayed and President and CEO Mohamed Al-Ayed received the award from David Cass on behalf of the awards organizers.
“We’re delighted that this program has been recognized by our peers in the industry,” Mohamed Al-Ayed said in his Jeddah office on Monday.
The Al-Baik-Coca-Cola Environmental Awareness Campaign, planned, organized, and managed by SACCS TRACCS, was launched in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia during the summer of 2005 as part of the UN Environmental Program’s “Clean up the world” campaign and is claimed to be the first major sustained initiative across the Kingdom ever to address the issue of public littering on a broad scale.
The six-month CSR event, which lasted from June through November 2005, was supervised from start to finish by Sarah Al-Ayed, who headed a team of over 25 people to roll out the program. She brought together the sponsors, municipal and other government authorities, private sector businesses, individuals and various agencies to ensure the success of the “landmark initiative.”
The program included a massive beach cleanup, an extensive series of school visits, competitions for children and adults and a community drive aimed to raise awareness of the public responsibility to keep their community clean. As part of this drive over 300,000 people signed pledges to keep their surroundings clean. The pledges were collected on 410 banners and displayed on Jeddah’s Corniche during the culmination of the summer program.
The campaign reached millions of people across the Kingdom and has helped transform public policy toward environmental awareness, becoming a prototype for other municipal awareness programs.
Advertising giant Leo Burnett was brought in to support the PR campaign with the development of two innovative cartoon characters, Nazeeh and Wartan, created to communicate the anti-littering message to an audience of all ages in an engaging and entertaining way.
“We’re deeply committed to using PR and communications disciplines to benefit the communities within which we work. We’ve been lucky to have a close and long-term relationship with Al-Baik, which is one of the most socially responsible companies in the Middle East,” Mohamed Al Ayed said, adding that he hoped that this program can be the benchmark for other CSR initiatives — bringing together private and public sectors in an enterprise that can help transform attitudes and behaviors for the better.
