What The Immortal Awards MEA Finalists Reveal About the Region in 2025

The best work from the Middle East and Africa (MEA) was hotly debated last week as part of The Immortal Awards’ second regional jury day, held in partnership with Boomtown Productions.

Creative leaders from across MEA gathered for the event in Dubai, on the hunt for the region’s best examples of commercial creativity from the past year to compete in the global round of judging in December. Ultimately, the 24-piece shortlist was whittled down to just four during the session, representing Lebanon, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia.

The standout project for Ryan Reed, chief creative officer at M+C Saatchi Group Middle East, was Puck’s sensitive yet hard-hitting ‘Recipe for Change’. In the face of mass displacement and instability, the campaign saw the dairy brand and FP7 McCann Dubai pair Lebanese mothers with international chefs to transform their cherished family recipes into a source of empowerment, both economic and otherwise.

The CCO summed it up as “human-led storytelling, beautifully executed,” praising the hyper-relevance to the region's current challenges. “It’s such a wonderful way for a brand to give back and acknowledge something as fundamental and as human as recipes that have been passed down, and sharing that with the world,” Ryan continued. “Beautiful, beautiful piece of work.”

While case studies tended to do more harm than good in the jury room, Bianca Geater, head of design at Dentsu Creative MENA, appreciated this one for its authenticity and sincerity of emotion. As a South African living abroad, one particular element really hit home for her.

“Being an expat living outside of my home country, there’s something relatable in it: being able to eat a meal authentic to where you come from is really special. What I really love is that the focus is on the people still at home, which is a beautiful way to honour those women and honour family traditions. In the world we live in today, where everything is so fast and digital, an authentic family recipe is still something super real. That’s very special.”

Equally, the jury welcomed light-hearted, straightforward humour with open arms. MG and DDB Egypt's ‘Well Known. Even If Not Owned.' brand campaign, which somehow turned a hard-sell of features into comedy vignettes, was a highlight for Sarah Forbes, associate creative director at Impact BBDO.

“It feels like it goes back to traditional advertising – it doesn’t have to be super meaningful or change the world,” Sarah reminisced. In particular, it offers an antidote to the seriousness of the world today, and within the industry. “We take ourselves a bit too seriously sometimes, and we over-engineer things; but this is just so simple, compact, and does everything it needs to do.” She also celebrated the films’ execution: “the set design, the performance, the casting, all of it.”

MG resonated particularly well with the Arabic speakers in the room, who noted the local flavour of the dialogue which perhaps got lost in translation for the English subtitles. Hussein Sobh, music supervisor at MassiveMusic Dubai, shared his perspective as an Egyptian himself, amused by the cultural accuracy of the campaign’s central insight: Egyptians really do hold an encyclopaedic knowledge of cars that aren’t their own.

“It was super clever that they tapped into the Egyptian market's knowledge of different cars in general, but specifically MG, with even the police and the robbers and the security basically listing specs – all very real Egyptian scenarios, by the way,” Hussein laughed.

“What I love about the MG films is how they revive the Egyptian film scene and the humour,” added senior creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi, Rita Harbie. “We watched a total of six films and after every one I kept saying, ‘I hope there's one more’. The fact that you want to watch a continuation of these ads is a powerful sign.”

The discussion around MG reconfirmed the importance of local and regional judging, observed Wael Baytamouni, creative director, Science & Sunshine. “Background matters, and it's almost impossible for you to get the full context of a certain advertisement without understanding the actual culture behind it,” he explained. “Everyone has a different opinion. Everyone has a different perspective. But the only people who will actually be able to judge are the target audience, who are not in the room. The best way to approach this is to keep learning about the culture, indulge yourself with information about the culture, live with them, speak to them, so that you'll be able to be fair when you throw a judgement in the room.”

​Testicular Cancer Society’s ‘Sponsored Balls’, which leveraged the perfectly sponsorable blank space on footballers’ shorts to remind men to perform self-exams, earned FP7 McCann Dubai a second placement among the list of Finalists.

​Shane Martin, founder of The Immortal Awards’ regional partner, Boomtown Productions, hailed the campaign as a piece of “marketing genius”. He said, “It's one of those things that I'm sure many agencies wish they had done, because it's quite an obvious idea when you see it: it's just a very clever use of the advertising space available on footballers. So to put it on their nether regions is very insightful and cool.”

​Alex Pineda, Horizon FCB Dubai’s chief creative officer, agreed, calling it the idea that made him say, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’. “Clever, witty, and ‘ballsy’ (no pun intended) – a very brave and unexpected take on the overused sports sponsorship territory.”

‘Sponsored Balls’ was one of two campaigns Alex found to be the most powerful, not only for their creative approach and fresh perspectives, but also for the tangible solutions they offer. The other was HungerStation and VML Saudi Arabia’s ‘The Shaded Route’.

The last project to secure Finalist status, ‘The Shaded Route’ presented an AI-powered navigation system to help Riyadh’s delivery drivers plan cooler journeys in the sweltering heat, without compromising on efficiency.

Bianca at Dentsu Creative MENA attested to its need. “It's such an actual fact in the region that it gets so hot you don't want to stick your head outside, and there are thousands of delivery drivers servicing the whole city daily. You can order a cappuccino or an apple and get it delivered, so doing something for these delivery drivers is really important.”

“From an innovation perspective, it's solving a true matter that delivery drivers are struggling with, and that definitely positions HungerStation as a solution-forward brand that eventually can get it to an Immortal level,” added Wael at Science & Sunshine.

A couple of points became clear over the course of the day. One was the importance of robust juries who carefully evaluate authenticity, question assumptions and stats, and are just as mindful of what information is cleverly omitted.

“As the creative community, it's definitely our job to make sure that the work that's showcased is real, really happened, and really made an impact,” said Bianca. “I believe that is our due diligence that we have to do as a jury, and that often gets a bit murky. So today was really refreshing because we had quite a focus on that.”

Secondly, the general consensus among the jury was that the Middle East and Africa could offer much more than it’s currently giving. Rita at Saatchi & Saatchi, who spoke also from the experience of judging last year, concluded that it had been a wake-up call for the region to take a step back and reassess its strategies with clients in order to achieve what’s really important: “creating immortal work that helps businesses and helps brands maintain their relevance.”

The four MEA Finalists to survive the day – Puck ‘Recipe for Change’, MG ‘Well known. Even if not owned.’, HungerStation ‘The Shaded Route’, and Testicular Cancer Society ‘Sponsored Balls’ – will next compete against the recently crowned European Finalists, and the yet-to-be-decided North America, LATAM, AUNZ and Asia Finalists during the final, global round of judging in December. There, the jury will decide which projects are worthy of picking up a Commendation or receiving the ultimate prize – an Immortal Award.

The Immortal Awards 2025 Jury Calendar

• Thursday, October 2nd: Germany Jury, Berlin, hosted by Innocean Berlin (See the Finalists here)
  
• Wednesday, October 15th: UK Jury, London, in partnership with Framestore and Company 3 (See the Finalists here)
  
• Tuesday, October 21st: Ireland Jury, Dublin, in partnership with The Brill Building, Rubberduck and Screen Scene (See the Finalists here)
  
• Thursday, October 23rd: Europe Jury, London, in partnership with Boo Agency and Park Pictures (See the Finalists here)
  
• Wednesday, October 29th: MEA Jury, Dubai, in partnership with Boomtown Productions (See the Finalists here)
  
• Tuesday, November 11th: Canada Jury, Toronto, in partnership with Zulu Alpha Kilo
  
• Thursday, November 13th: US Jury, New York, in partnership with Chelsea Pictures
  
• Friday, November 14th: North America Jury, New York, in partnership with Whitehouse Post
  
• Tuesday, November 18th: LATAM Jury, online
  
• Wednesday, November 26th: AUNZ Jury, Sydney, in partnership with Bear Meets Eagle on Fire and ARC
  
• Thursday, November 27th: Asia Jury, online
  
• Wednesday, December 3rd: Global Jury, New York, in partnership with JSM Music