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Actress Teta Latifa is taking Lebanese dairy on a world tour. The story of this Lebanese grandma, stuck at Montreal customs because of the dozen jars of Taanayel Farms labneh she has brought in her luggage for her expatriate grandson, has been spreading wherever members of the scattered Lebanese community have settled.

“I wanted to go beyond TV and make the film viral,” explains Leo Burnett Beirut associate creative director Omar Boustany, who came up with the concept for Taanayel Farms, Lebanon’s market leader in dairy products. “A classic TV broadcast would have only reached people in Lebanon and only the type of Lebanese who watch local TV. That’s why we worked on Internet social networks such as Facebook. Many young Lebanese watch them more than LBCI.”

Boustany and his team started hitting various Internet groups such as “Lebanese worldwide community,” “It’s not easy to be Lebanese”, and “Labneh lovers,” generating an instant buzz with an impressive snowball effect. Since the initial TVC, directed by Nadine Labaki – famous for her hugely popular movie Caramel – was launched on Nov. 6, no less than 19,000 viewers have watched it on YouTube. Between November 11 and 13, at the peak of its success, 99.6 percent of Youtube viewers in Lebanon, 35 percent in the UAE, 15 percent in Qatar and Egypt, and 9 percent in Canada, watched the Taanayel Farms’ film. These figures are all the more impressive since, in comparison to regular, passively watched, TVCs, Internet implies a search for the ad.

Be it in Brazil, Canada or the UK, Lebanese expats – most of whom had to go through exactly the same argument with an uncaring customs officer at one time or another – fell in love with this typical granny, mimicking her gestures and starting e-mail chains to tell their friends about her.

“The interaction between television and Internet was crucial,” says Boustany. “Most ads are uploaded on the Internet after they’re launched, which basically is archiving. In this case, people uploaded the film themselves and transmitted it spontaneously while it was showing on TV, which helped it gain momentum and created an event.” Then Leo Burnett released versions subtitled in Portuguese, Spanish, English and French, which helped attract Internet viewers from countries as diverse as Pakistan, Cambodia and Tanzania. “I believe the strategic positioning also played a major part,” says Boustany. “There’s a perfect equation between the product that’s white, spotless, and the granny who is also pure at heart. As for the brand, just like this grandmother becomes Lebanon’s ambassador via labneh, it becomes Lebanese food’s representative worldwide and, as such, shrinks the competition down.”

Not bad for Taanayel Farms’ first shot at advertising.
 
Watch the ad here.

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