Arabic film festival breaks language and cultural barriers to win important award

25.11.08

Bruce Rowley, General Manager, Retail, Integral Energy, sponsor of the Community Award congratulates Mouna Zaylah (right) and Sadiya Abboud (left) Co-directors of the Arab Film Festival

A community group in western Sydney which staged a runaway success Arabic film festival last April was tonight named winner of the Integral Energy Community Award at the annual National Multicultural Marketing Awards.

The Community arts group, ICE (Information and Cultural Exchange), was embarrassed by its own success when they were unable to find seats for hundreds of people at most sessions of the 2008 Sydney Arab Film Festival.

The group cleverly exploited the perception that people from one of the world's most troubled regions would be hungry for stories and representations of their culture that are not limited to themes of conflict and war. They were right but they also discovered that the non-Arabic speaking movie fans also wanted to see stories of day to day life in the Middle East.

However, it wasn't necessarily the quality of the films that brought so many people to the venue. It was more likely the creative marketing campaign that not only won over Arabic language newspapers, television and radio but also spread the message through community internet sites including Australian Lebanese media websites, e-bulletins and social network sites including Facebook, as well as meeting places and cafes.

The professional and creative posters and promotion cards featuring Arabic imagery also caught the eye of the mainstream media and, interest in this quirky event soon snowballed.

These "strongly branded materials" were distributed to Arabic community hubs such as Arab grocery shops, food outlets, schools community events and Arab sweet shops. They also targeted places where communities with an interest in multicultural arts gather, such as universities and arts and film institutions in the city, inner west and western suburbs.

One effective innovation was to produce a television commercial for the festival which was run on the LBC (Lebanese) channel through Optus Cable to local viewers. They also used local Arabic radio station 2Moro, offering give-away tickets to the festival to their Arabic-speaking listeners.  Stories were also featured on SBS Arabic language radio programmes. The event was sold as one which portrayed "the true diversity and complexity of Arab experience."

Congratulating the Arab Film Festival Committee of ICE, the Chair of the community Relations Commission, Stepan Kerkyasharian, said:

"This is a true marketing success story which demonstrates that the smart use of every available marketing channel can pay off for a community organisation which had only 7,500 dollars to promote their ambitious plan for a language-specific film festival in western Sydney."

"I am sure there are many lessons in this campaign for commercial marketers, big and small and for marketing managers at all tiers of government", Mr Kerkyasharian said.