With ‘Play Life’ Droga5 London, part of Accenture Song, Helps Qiddiya Reimagine What a City Can Be

There are project briefs and then there are briefs that come around – maybe – once in a lifetime. ‘Play Life’ is the latter. The objective for Droga5 London, part of Accenture Song, was to create a global brand platform and campaign for a city centred around the theme of play, interrogating what the concept means and how it can inspire today and in the future. Qiddiya is the ‘city of play’ in question, currently being built 40km away from Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, to connect people with the idea of play and weave it into every aspect of everyday life. The brand platform is also a promise that renders the city tangible – a necessity for a project that will be opening next year, and constantly under further construction.

Tom Elias, group account director, Larry Seftel, creative lead, and David Dearlove, creative director, explain that moving away from now commonplace gigacity marketing and communications – hyper glossy CGI visuals and overblown promises – was vital for this brief. Instead, the team doubled down on emotive, cinematic storytelling that communicates what life in Qiddiya will feel like, the unique idea driving its construction, and play’s transformative potential.

‘Play Life’ launched with a hero campaign film directed by Prodco’s Ian Pons Jewell and Nick Roney, with cinematography by the Oscar-winning Erik Messerschmidt, capturing what it means to ‘play life and not just live it’, a sentiment reflected in the campaign tagline. Since then, the team has worked on four more films, honing in on different parts of Qiddiya City currently under construction.

LBB caught up with Tom, Larry, and David to learn more about bringing the concept of play to life, finding the right aesthetic to communicate the city’s potential, and the challenges of taking on such an ambitious brief.

LBB> Qiddiya City is the first city that’s built for play. What kind of brief did you receive, and what were your initial thoughts? How did you interpret the idea of play in relation to a city and the people that will eventually inhabit it?

Tom, Larry & David> The brief presented an incredibly interesting challenge: to build both anticipation for a new city that doesn’t exist while establishing trust that the project will exist one day. The ambition was bold: a whole new city, built from scratch, dedicated to play in every facet. To do this, we needed to ask ourselves two questions: what kind of life does a city built entirely around play enable, and the fundamental question: What is important about play to the everyday lives that people live? We tapped into a wealth of research about the deeper importance of play beyond the frivolous ‘play’ that you’d expect of a theme park or similar – we play to connect with each other, to learn, to grow, to stay healthy. These are all qualities which people feel they do not get enough of in their day-to-day lives. Once we settled on this, a further consideration was to then find a universal platform idea that spoke to the power of play that would resonate across different geographies and cultures.

LBB> What was your response to the brief and the initial strategy?

Tom, Larry & David> The key question is, how do you launch the first city designed for play? The answer, you take it seriously. Qiddiya’s ambition is to be the world’s greatest ambassador of play, and to do so, we steered away from treating play as simple and frivolous. Play is essential. And the work we’ve made celebrates that.

Qiddiya represents an inspiring ambition: Saudi Arabia will host the world's first city dedicated to play. A provocative statement from a society once seen as the antithesis of play. However, this city of entertainment, sport and culture is still under construction. The creative challenge: build the city in people’s imaginations and make it tangible enough to challenge their preconceptions. By using cinematic storytelling and world-class directors, we conjure an image of a humdrum, boring, constricted routine, then use the power of film to shatter this, showing the power of play unleashed and building excitement for Qiddiya.

LBB> The campaign’s executions are a marked break from gigacity marketing and communications convention, which typically favour highly glossy ads and CGI. Why was it important to pivot away from the expected content and aesthetic in this scenario?

Tom, Larry & David> Most advertising in this space is a glossy spectacle that settles into a sea of sameness. It’s reliant on heavy CGI rather than the feeling that the actual place will engender. But glossy, glitzy CGI only serves to make the city feel unattainable – and actually reinforces that it won’t be made, which is something for gigacities in general to overcome.

Secondly, we needed to consider how to show the city convincingly, set against the reality that so much work that promotes the megacities in the region feels rarified and unreal. The answer here is to make all the work feel grounded in real emotion. Sure, the city isn’t built, but the work should all make it feel palpable and real, while at the same time capturing the crazy magic and ambition of the place.

From a launch ad that positions Qiddiya as the answer to how tedious play has become, to a film for the Performing Arts Centre that showcases the real desire of performing artists in the region for a stage like no other, we tried to anchor the development in what the human benefit would be. In Aquarabia and Six Flags, which will be the first feature of Qiddiya City to open, we focus on the feeling of joy being as endless as the rides themselves. Our other films for the Speed Park Track and the Stadium showcase how these one-of-a-kind structures aren’t only architectural wonders, but hero the emotional impact they will have.

LBB> What were the most significant achievements with this campaign over the last 12 months?

Tom, Larry & David> We created work that managed to resonate, not only with a global audience, but a local Saudi one too.

The campaign launched at the end of 2023 and is still in market, continuing to exceed all expectations and benchmarks. With the simultaneous global launch in a dozen markets, the campaign has garnered almost five billion impressions and reached an audience of over one billion. Our hero film assets have clocked near 500 million views, more than doubling our full nine-week campaign predictions after less than one month on air. Qiddiya itself was front-page news in every major newspaper in Saudi Arabia and the wider region, and the launch was trending on X, demonstrating how much this campaign got people talking. Leaving the city to people’s imaginations was also a powerful recruitment tool and a powerful first step in making this city a reality.

LBB> What were the main challenges and learnings?

Tom, Larry & David> The main challenge was trying to show something that is still unbuilt, and will be taking shape over a period of decades. As an ambition, it’s almost unbelievable. So chunking it up into bite-sized pieces that all pay off a bigger whole was a key tension.

In terms of learnings, Qiddiya represents a version of Saudi Arabia that blends its heritage and history with its new standing in the world. It has an incredible history, a varied and unique culture and its own humour and tone. Continuing to learning about Saudi culture - in order to inform the work and assure it lands - was one of the joys of this project. From the touches of humour in Aquarabia to championing ballet, a new and growing art form in the region for the Performing Arts Centre, we always wanted the current state of the nation to be an important strategic and creative input.