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Over the last two years, there have been several examples of laborers in the UAE refusing to work – citing late payment (often a matter of months, rather than days) from their employers and poor living conditions among their reasons for doing so.
 
Striking is a dangerous business in the UAE, where trade unions are not allowed and employers wield all the power. Until recently, this wasn’t seen as a major problem – the national media usually turned a blind eye, or would report what a fine job the police did in dealing with any unrest. But the UAE’s ever-increasing international profile has, inevitably, meant the international media is taking more of an interest in the country. And international newspapers and news channels, the UAE is learning, are not so compliant.
 
“The UAE is the epitome of excellence in so many areas, but this is one area where there are problems,” says Shehzad Yunus, chief creative officer of Dubai-based independent agency, Pirana Advertising. “A lot has been written about how laborers are treated, the conditions in which they live and work. It’s not good for the country. So [the national postal service] Emirates Post came up with this initiative of getting construction companies to transfer their staff’s salaries to any of its branches.” And Pirana won a six-way pitch to publicize the Salary Pay-Out Scheme.
 
 
PAY DAY. It’s the most exciting campaign to date for the year-old independent agency, of which Yunus is co-owner, as well as CCO. “I think it’s a great initiative on the government’s part – Emirates Post and the Ministry of Labor – and it was a good opportunity for us to do something that’s meaningful and interesting,” he says of the campaign, which launched on Dec. 1 in the English and Arabic press, as well as outdoor.
 
The agency’s task was to make construction companies aware of the opportunity Emirates Post is offering: to simplify their pay-day hassles by sending the money to Emirates Post and letting it deal with the details. If there are any glitches, Emirates Post and the Ministry of Labor will do the chasing up – whether of employee or employer.
 
“Imagine paying 5,000 or 10,000 sweaty, tired, frustrated people who’ve been queuing outside your office,” says Yunus. “You need accountants, HR people, an army of security guards. So this initiative is saving you the hassle. It’s not compulsory. It’s not being imposed on people. But it’s a good initiative from the government. I think it’s going to go a long way.
 
“And,” he adds, “it’s an equally good campaign.”
 
 
PILLARS OF THE COMMUNITY. It’s certainly a striking one. At first glance, the ads look like movie posters – dramatic skylines behind square-jawed men defiantly standing tall in the face of some unseen danger. “The foundation of our rapid growth will be compensated by us,” reads the first ad released.
 
The twist is that the figures in the foreground of the ad are not the construction company executives, or the architects, or the money men. The heroes of this campaign are the laborers themselves.
 
“The [body] copy talks about the construction companies and their teams of people who have built Dubai together,” says Yunus. “But since the initiative is for the laborers we felt that if we made them the heroes, people would have empathy towards it. If you just had the construction company owners in the ad, it wouldn’t have the same feel.
 
“The campaign is more of a eulogy, or a tribute, to the true builders of Dubai, who are the laborers,” he continues.
 
It’s important, Yunus believes, that the UAE starts to recognize the contribution that cheap imported labor has made to its development. “There’s a lot more to progress than just blue-glass buildings and islands that you can see from the moon,” he says. “Progress is also about acknowledging and celebrating your unsung heroes and understanding what they’re going through.”
 
 
STORMY WEATHER. “Some people might feel that it’s a bit too dark,” says Yunus of the campaign. “But it had to have that mood. It can’t be bright and glossy. Everything about Dubai is very stylized. Normally everything is too retouched, too clean. We’re talking about these guys who go through hell every day. It had to be moody. It had to be dark.”
 
Realism is a vital part of the campaign. Which is why Pirana opted to use actual workers from several different construction companies in the ads. “While you’re praising these guys, you still need to capture their plight,” says Yunus. “It’s about them, so it’s only fair that they should be featured in the ads. If we’d just got a bunch of models to do it, they would not have been able to do it justice.”
 
The “larger-than-life” appearance of the laborers, Yunus explains, was achieved by shooting them from a low-angle (with the camera on the floor), then superimposing those shots onto pictures of one of Dubai’s many building sites.
 
“It had to be a very dramatic sky and lighting. It couldn’t just be a straight flashbulb on them because that would take the drama away,” he says. “It would look like they’re standing there posing. We wanted a real shot, but it still had to be a little dramatic and heroic. It’s a nice balance.”
 
Equal care was taken to ensure that the workers’ expressions matched the required mood.
 
“When I get out of our building [in Media City], there’s all this construction going on and I see these guys waiting for the bus,” Yunus says. “They look like people who’ve done so much and still not been rewarded for it. That expression is very important, and I think we caught that in these pictures.”
 
 
REDEMPTION. The ads’ body copy is necessarily straightforward, since it’s targeting construction company executives, who, says Yunus, “don’t have time” for anything else.
 
“You have to give them the information right away,” he says. “The most important factor is: ‘What’s in it for me?’” Which is why the copy explains how they can save money, time and effort through the initiative.

Overall, Yunus believes the campaign is an excellent example of how advertising can raise important social issues while still sticking to a client’s brief.

“The temptation to be melodramatic is always there when you give a public service brief to a creative,” he says. “We didn’t want that. We wanted to say, ‘This is what these people are.’ And when people look at the visuals and read the copy and understand what the initiative is and why we’ve done this ad, then the campaign has done its job.”

The campaign was “wonderful” to work on, Yunus says. And a welcome change from the majority of his day-to-day work.
 
“You do all these campaigns for consumer goods and FMCGs and designer jeans and perfumes and stuff,” he says. “And that’s fine, it’s all part of the job. But then suddenly you get a chance to redeem yourself with something like this.”
 
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ON THE RECORD
Shehzad Yunus, chief creative officer, Pirana Advertising.
 
On ideas. If you have a powerful idea, then you’ve got a great ad. An idea is the soul of an ad. You can dress up the corpse in a designer suit, make him wear a Rolex, but he’ll still be a dead guy. But if you put soul in him, then he’s alive. Then he’s human. That’s the difference between an ad with an idea in it and just a good-looking piece of fluff.
 
On clients. It’s all about building trust and respect. Try to earn your client’s respect first, because if he doesn’t respect you, everything you say is going to be crap. It’ll just be [perceived as] you being hyper-emotional because you’re a creative. If you go to the client and talk sense, and show that what you’ve done is steeped in the product itself, in what the brand does, then you won’t have any problems.
 
On stress. In my opinion, the moment you start worrying about things, it gets to you so much that you stop doing great work. I’m a creative person. If I’m stressed out, or nervous, or scared, I can’t work. If I can’t work, this agency can’t grow.

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