Over the past decade, Katch International has emerged as a game-changing PR agency in Dubai. It should come as no surprise, then, that the new year has us feeling all kinds of sentimental here at Katch HQ.
Let’s take a quick look back at three memorable PR campaigns from the last decade:
Rove Hotels
In an effort to encourage plastic bottle recycling in the community, Rove Hotels tasked Katch with motivating Rovers (guests) to embrace the habit of recycling. As a result, we conceptualised and created the ‘Check In with Plastic; Check Out with Dinner’ campaign. We invited Rovers to bring their plastic bottles to The Daily restaurants for recycling, at Rove Hotels across Dubai. They would then receive AED 1 for every bottle donated. Rove subsequently sent the bottles to licensed recycling specialists, and the plastic was processed to make various useful products.
Additionally, Rove Hotels joined forces with renowned sustainability advocate and artist Mariska Nell. For the collaboration, Mariska produced a unique, environmentally innovative creation: a chair made from plastic bottles collected at Rove Hotels. She displayed the piece, along with her other artworks, in Rove’s Sustainability Corner at Rove Downtown during Downtown Design. This tied in with Dubai Design Week, to further raise awareness of the impact of plastic bottles on the environment.
The results of the massively successful campaign speak for themselves. On top of securing widespread media coverage, Rove Hotels collected 150,000 plastic bottles in just three months, versus an initial target of 10,000. Mission accomplished!
Suitsupply
To mark the opening of two new Suitsupply stores in Dubai, Katch created a next-level campaign based on the brand’s global big idea, ‘Find Your Perfect Fit’. In doing so, we aimed to build significant hype around the store openings. The result, The Trailblazers Campaign, was a creative and impactful campaign that still managed to adhere to strict brand guidelines.
The Trailblazers Campaign centred on locally based movers and shakers – people who had left an indelible mark on Dubai’s landscape. These brand ambassadors had to be trailblazers in their respective industries. Consequently, we chose serial gastropreneur Joey Ghazal, Emirati film director Mohammed Harib and nightlife entrepreneur Elie Lahoud. We then created videos for each brand ambassador, based on the big idea: ‘Find Your Perfect Fit’.
The team at our PR agency in Dubai was involved in every aspect of the campaign, from selecting the right ambassadors, picking out the perfect locations and creating the storyboard, to drafting the dialogue, producing the corresponding brand material and creating press releases. In short, we executed the ideal 360-degree communications plan. Over a period of four months, the campaign blazed a trail in the media, as it gained coverage across leading online and print publications. In addition to building hype for the new store openings, it also considerably exceeded the client’s expectations on all fronts. In fact, the campaign impressed the Suitsupply team so much that they used similar storylines for other regional campaigns in Russia and China.
Live Nation
In 2018, Moroccan-French-Canadian comedian Gad Elmaleh brought his ‘Dream Tour’ to Dubai Opera. Live Nation tasked Katch with generating enough buzz around the show to sell tickets as quickly as possible. Even though Gad Elmaleh was an established comedian, we were set a very limited budget to achieve our objective. Moreover, UAE ticket buyers tend to be a late buying market. Nevertheless, we were confident and set about rolling out a campaign capable of selling out the show in a short space of time.
To begin with, we kicked off an integrated communications campaign, incorporating our PR, Social Media and Digital Marketing teams, in July 2018. By October, the show had sold out. Job done; right? Not quite! Gad Elmaleh decided to add an extra show, because it was the last date of his ‘Dream Tour’. Without delay, we set about replicating the same style of launch-and-amplify campaign. This time, to encourage further traction, we focused on communicating the high likelihood that tickets for the second show would also sell out.
In addition to extensive media coverage in leading English, Arabic and French publications, Katch secured interview opportunities for Gad Elmaleh with a host of popular titles. The integrated campaign was also hugely impactful across social media and in terms of digital marketing. To top it all off, we achieved all of this while utilising just 35% of our allocated budget.
Katch Us in 2020
Here’s to 2020 and another exciting decade as a leading PR agency in Dubai and London! Get in touch!