Actress and director Marwa Khalil is on the major look out for a Lebanese individual that can play the role of an Italian man for the new Nescafe Cappuccino Italiano TV commercial.
After several casting attempts, eight chosen male models were called in for their final chance to be the new face of the brand.
The guys gave it all they've got in hope one of them lands the part. While shedding humorous light on the DNA of Lebanese men and how no matter how much they tried to impersonate the Italian attitude and accent, “looking for the real Italian” never seemed so hard.
When hope is almost lost, Marwa takes a coffee break and tries her first sip of Nescafe Cappuccino only to conclude that something that tastes as great as this simply does not need any advertising. Let the tasteful Italian coffee speak for itself.
The challenge was indeed to help Nescafé’s target demographics tell the true Italian cappuccino from the “wannabes.”
“When we launched NESCAFÉ Cappuccino Italiano in Lebanon, the competition was rife. Instant cappuccino is quite the rave here and several players were already claiming to be authentically Italian,” explained the creative team at Publicis ME. “Only thing, they aren’t!”
In this TVC, Nescafé film succeeds in blurring the line between what’s real and what’s fake and this is perfectly aligned with the brand’s message: to set itself apart from a competition similarly touting the genuine Italian flavor of its products.
“In a world where "fake" is in danger of becoming the new "real", the only way branded content can add value to our life is by separating the originals from wannabes,” noted Jan Leube, Publicis’ Regional Executive Creative Director.
Driven by the brand’s desire to stress on the unbeatable taste of its product, Publicis decided to approach this through a candid-camera, social-experiment stunt – the casting session. The result: one clever indirect comparative advertising campaign that is tongue-in-cheek, lighthearted and entertaining above all.
Humour is a great driving force for great ideas (specially when it's culturally relevant), making brand recall easy while emphasising brand differentiator. And here lies further the strength of the commercial, as humour is rightly lauded throughout the story and till the final cut. It really felt that the models were auditioning for their lives - little did they know that they had all already.
“In a hard-to-please market like Lebanon, where the bar for humour is set quite high, we needed to catch the attention of women in Lebanon, we wanted something playful and unique,” explained Maya Khammar, client services director at Publicis ME.
Credits:
Agency: Publicis Middle East
Regional Executive Creative Director: Jan Leube
Regional Creative Director: Vijay Simon
Art Director: Nadia Karim
Client Services Director: Maya Khammar
Associate Account Director: Teddy Abdelnour
Senior Account Executive: Abdel Rahman Hassouna
Senior Arabic Copywriter: Kamel Zeitouny
Agency Producer: Heba Kharouf
Production House: VIP Films
Director: Mazen Fayad
Executive Producer: Paula Tamba
Producer: Martha Nassar
