Asiacell Honors Iraqi Women With Leo Burnett's 2019 International Women's Day Film
Asiacell's "Because you deserve only the best" is a 2019 film campaign created by Leo Burnett in Iraq, released in March of that year to honour and thank women across Iraq in alignment with International Women's Day, positioning the telecommunications brand as a champion of female empowerment in the Iraqi market.
The campaign carries a direct, emotionally resonant premise. Asiacell, one of Iraq's leading telecommunications and data-services providers, commissioned Leo Burnett's As Sulaymaniyah office to produce a film-led creative work comprising three distinct media assets. The campaign's stated purpose was to support and celebrate women in Iraq, channelling the cultural moment of International Women's Day into a brand expression that extended beyond product promotion into community acknowledgment. In doing so, Asiacell aligned commercial identity with social values at a time when purpose-driven advertising was gaining traction across the Middle East and North Africa region.
The campaign's geographical grounding is specific and deliberate. In Iraq, Asiacell held an estimated 38% market share in 2019, according to market data cited by clapboard.com, making it the second-largest operator in a three-player market dominated by Zain Iraq, Asiacell, and Korek Telecom. Against that competitive backdrop, a campaign addressing Iraqi women represented both a cultural statement and a strategic audience play, reaching into a segment of society whose everyday experience the brand sought to publicly acknowledge. The Clapboard Score for this campaign is 57 out of 100, reflecting a work that demonstrates clear emotional intent and cultural relevance while leaving room for deeper structural ambition in its creative and strategic execution.
Asiacell serves more than 20 million customers across Iraq, according to asiacell.com. That scale positions the brand as a mass-market operator with both the reach and the responsibility to address broad societal themes. Launching a campaign tied to International Women's Day was therefore not a niche gesture but a communication directed at a substantial portion of its own subscriber base, framing appreciation for women as a natural extension of the brand's relationship with its customers.
Iraq's mobile telecommunications market in 2019 was divided among three principal operators. According to clapboard.com, Zain Iraq held an estimated 43% market share, Asiacell held approximately 38%, and Korek Telecom accounted for the remaining share, with all three collectively serving more than 90% of the market. That concentration meant competitive differentiation could not rest solely on network capability or pricing. According to researchandmarkets.com, Iraq had approximately 37.2 million mobile subscribers in 2019, representing a substantial and growing base across which operators competed intensely for loyalty and brand affinity. Zain Iraq, Asiacell's principal rival, was particularly strong in southern Iraq, according to clapboard.com, which created regional pressure on Asiacell to consolidate its standing through brand-level storytelling rather than purely commercial messaging.
Asiacell had already distinguished itself on technical grounds by becoming the first operator to bring 4G connectivity to Iraq, as noted by asiacell.com. With that innovation milestone established, the 2019 International Women's Day campaign represented a shift toward emotional brand equity. Leo Burnett, which had held the Asiacell Iraq advertising account since July 2010 according to campaignme.com, brought a regional creative sensibility to the brief, grounding the film's message in the lived realities of Iraqi women rather than generic empowerment language. This strategic orientation placed the campaign firmly within a growing regional tradition of cause-adjacent advertising that sought to earn cultural credibility alongside commercial recall.
André Chammas directed the film at the centre of the "Because you deserve only the best" campaign. Direction of this kind — anchoring an emotionally driven telecommunications campaign to a specific cultural occasion — requires a precise tonal register: warm without sentimentality, celebratory without condescension. The creative team assembled by Leo Burnett's As Sulaymaniyah office brought that discipline to a three-asset film production built around a single, unflinching idea: that the women of Iraq are deserving of the very best, expressed through the voice and values of a brand they trust.
Creative Director Obeyda Al Fayad led the overall creative vision, with Art Director Mohammed Aouda shaping the visual language of the campaign and Copywriter Farah Salim responsible for the verbal identity that gave the work its title and thematic spine. Photographer Jonathan Guy Weyland contributed to the visual production, ensuring the campaign's still and motion elements maintained coherent aesthetic integrity across its three media assets. The collaboration between these disciplines — copywriting, art direction, film direction, and photography — suggests a campaign constructed with deliberate craft rather than expedient production.
The film medium was the appropriate vehicle for this message. In Iraq, where oral and visual storytelling traditions carry significant cultural weight, a film campaign offered the emotional bandwidth that print or static digital formats could not match. By routing the International Women's Day message through moving image and sound, Leo Burnett gave Asiacell the means to show appreciation rather than merely state it. The campaign's creative premise — that deserving the best is not aspirational but inherent — is a claim that gains its full persuasive force only when delivered with the warmth and presence that film uniquely enables. The three media assets collectively reinforce this through varied but thematically unified executions.
No verified performance data for "Because you deserve only the best" is publicly available. No independent awards recognition for this specific campaign has been documented across adsoftheworld.com, clapboard.com, or any other publicly accessible industry record. The Clapboard Score of 57 out of 100 provides the most available evaluative benchmark, and it rewards the campaign's clarity of purpose while signalling that the work does not reach the upper tier of creative or strategic ambition.
Structurally, the campaign demonstrates several markers of effectiveness. Its message is singular and unambiguous: women in Iraq deserve the best. That clarity reduces cognitive load and increases the likelihood of emotional resonance with the target audience. The alignment with International Women's Day provides a culturally legitimate platform, ensuring the campaign operates within a recognised social moment rather than manufacturing one artificially. For a brand holding approximately 38% of the Iraqi mobile market according to clapboard.com, associating with a moment of societal significance carries real brand-equity value, reinforcing Asiacell's positioning as a community-oriented operator rather than a purely transactional service provider.
Where the campaign's structural ambition is more limited is in its differentiation. Purpose-driven International Women's Day advertising had become a category convention across the telecommunications sector by 2019, meaning the "Because you deserve only the best" campaign operated in a crowded creative and cultural space. The work's strength lies in the sincerity and local specificity of its execution — rooted in Iraq, made by an Iraqi-based creative team at Leo Burnett — rather than in a formally innovative creative idea. That local authenticity is, on balance, a genuine asset in a market where international advertising templates can feel disconnected from lived Iraqi experience.
Asiacell's "Because you deserve only the best" is a film campaign released in Iraq in March 2019. Created by Leo Burnett's As Sulaymaniyah office, it was designed to honour and thank women in Iraq as part of International Women's Day, comprising three media assets built around a message of female empowerment.
Leo Burnett created the campaign from its As Sulaymaniyah, Iraq office. According to campaignme.com, Leo Burnett had held the Asiacell Iraq advertising account since July 2010, giving the agency deep familiarity with the brand's voice and the Iraqi market context in which the campaign was released.
André Chammas directed the film. The broader creative team included Creative Director Obeyda Al Fayad, Art Director Mohammed Aouda, Copywriter Farah Salim, and Photographer Jonathan Guy Weyland, all working under the Leo Burnett As Sulaymaniyah office to deliver the campaign's emotionally grounded visual and verbal identity.
Asiacell held an estimated 38% of the Iraqi mobile market in 2019, according to clapboard.com, making it the second-largest operator behind Zain Iraq. The brand also serves more than 20 million customers, per asiacell.com, and was the first operator to bring 4G connectivity to Iraq, per asiacell.com.
No verified awards recognition for "Because you deserve only the best" is publicly documented across adsoftheworld.com or clapboard.com. The campaign received a Clapboard Score of 57 out of 100, reflecting clear emotional intent and cultural relevance within Iraq's telecommunications advertising landscape without reaching the highest tier of creative distinction.
Asiacell serves more than 20 million customers in Iraq, according to asiacell.com, making women a significant portion of its subscriber base. International Women's Day provided a culturally recognised platform to express appreciation authentically, allowing the brand to build emotional equity in a competitive three-operator market where Zain Iraq and Korek Telecom were direct rivals.
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