Etisalat Commercial Looks Like an MTV Video

My wonderful wife turned me on to this ad for Etisalat. Etisalat is a multinational Emirati based telecommunications services provider, currently operating in 15 countries across Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. I wanted to discuss the ad here on Inside That Ad because I believe it’s my first time seeing an ad that I confused with a music video. You don’t find out that it is actually advertising a product until the end of the commercial. All the scenes are not in any sort of sequence, there is a slogan and everyone in the commercial is dancing in some fashion.

Commercial Description

The commercial also features a fight scene between the two stars Ramadan and Van Damme that was made to look like a scene from one of Van Damme’s really old but good movies – Blood Sport, I watched at least three times. Another interesting observation about this commercial is its duration lasting 2 minutes and 33 seconds. The spot is definitely on the longer side of anything I’ve seen. In the US, commercials of this length usually only appear during advertising’s big day – the Superbowl. Not sure if the big game is seen in Egypt, it is, it’s most likely recorded and aird later, right?

Agency

Publicis Media’s Starcom Egypt represents Etisalat in the country. Although, I haven’t been able to absolutlyconfirm that Starcom Egypt is the agency or record.

Discussion

Honestly, if you liked this spot, comment below if you think this commercial reminded you of MTV music style videos from back in the 90s? Along with Van Damme the commercial featured Mohamed Ramadan, a famous Egyption rapper. Etisalat released the new commercial for Mohamed Ramadan where he sang “Shahna” (Recharging) to the melody of his successful song “Mafia”. In addition, Ramadan was part of Etisalat’s TV commercial entitled, “Akwa Kart fe Misr” (The Strongest Recharge Card in Egypt).