Dubai Duty Free’s 40th Anniversary campaign takes MEADFA Best Marketing Strategy Award
And the winner of the MEADFA 2024 Best Marketing Strategy Award is Dubai Duty Free, with Mona Al Ali, SVP – Human Resources, Michael Schmidt, SVP – Retail, Sharon Beecham, SVP - Purchasing and Zayed Al Shebli, SVP - Loss Prevention & Corporate Security on-hand to accept the honor
Dubai Duty Free won the “Best Marketing Strategy” Award at the 3rd Middle East & Africa Duty Free Association (MEADFA) Awards held on November 18 at Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi, UAE.
Held to coincide with the 22nd MEADFA conference, the awards ceremony was held during the MEADFA Gala dinner and was hosted by Sherif Toulan, MEADFA President and CEO, International Duty Free (IDF) Trading and Agencies along with Rob Marriott, Vice President, MEADFA and CEO, Aer Rianta International Middle East (ARIME).
Dubai Duty Free was recognized for its 40th Anniversary marketing campaign, which was “well implemented and demonstrated with extraordinary results”.
Commenting on the award, Ramesh Cidambi, Dubai Duty Free Managing Director Ramesh, said, “We are delighted to accept this award, which represents an eight-month marketing campaign that built up towards our 40th anniversary milestone in December last year.
“The campaign was wide-reaching with so many different elements and overall, there was great sense of awareness and excitement amongst our partners, our suppliers, our customers and our employees.”
Dubai Duty Free marked its 40th anniversary on December 20 2023 and the marketing campaign was rolled out from April of that year. The campaign had a number of diverse elements that successfully created an awareness of the milestone anniversary, including a range of product and consumer promotions, podcast and videos, fun activations on social media, special supplements, print and online coverage in various trade publications and key UAE media.
As a result of the campaign, Dubai Duty Free achieved all its objectives and 2023 ended on a high note with record sales of US$2.16 billion, representing a 24% increase over the previous year. December finished with record monthly sales of US$221 million, an 8% increase compared to the same month in 2022. December sales were further fueled by Dubai Duty Free’s 40th anniversary celebrations when the operation offered a 25% discount on December 20, which resulted in a shopping spree of US$14.8 million for 24 hours.
This latest accolade marks the fifth MEADFA Award received by Dubai Duty Free since its inception in 2022. The operation won the Best Retailer award in 2023, the Sustainability & CSR Awards in 2022 and 2023, while the late Executive Vice Chairman & CEO Colm McLoughlin received the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2022.
Organized by the MEADFA board, the awards program, which is now part of the annual conference, recognizes innovative, dynamic and world-class travel retail specialists in the Middle East and Africa region.
