Liwa International Festival 2025 Brings Passion to the Abu Dhabi Desert
The Liwa International Festival 2025 campaign, created by Serviceplan Middle East for Little Black Book.clapboard.com/archive/abu-dhabi-department-of-tourism-and-culture-one-summer-isnt-enough-travel-leisure">Experience Abu Dhabi — the destination brand of the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi — is a cinematic, multi-platform push that repositions LIWA 2025 as a diverse cultural and adventure event rather than a motorsport-only destination, targeting families, thrill-seekers, and culture enthusiasts across the United Arab Emirates and the wider region, according to Mediaoffice Abudhabi.
Launched on December 20, 2024, according to LBBOnline, the campaign ran under the platform theme 'Passion in the Spotlight' and supported a festival that spanned 23 days, from December 13, 2024 to January 4, 2025. The campaign's centrepiece is a cinematic brand film produced by Déjà vu, the appointed production company, which takes viewers behind the scenes of the Liwa International Festival while foregrounding its headline attractions: horse racing, motorsport stunts, hot air balloon rides, fireworks, and the Liwa Village Souk. The film was crafted to generate regional appetite and to communicate the full breadth of a festival that, in its 2025 edition, extended well beyond the dune-racing heritage that originally defined it.
In the United Arab Emirates, the Liwa Festival is anchored in the Al Dhafra region — a landscape defined by the Rub' al Khali desert — and its programming reflects that geography directly. The Buggy Torque Challenge and the Moreeb Dune Car Championship serve the adrenaline-seeking segment, while the Hollywood Circus and the Liwa Village Souk cater to families. That breadth of programming demanded a campaign architecture capable of speaking to multiple audience motivations simultaneously, and 'Passion in the Spotlight' is the strategic answer to that brief. The Clapboard Score for this campaign is 63 out of 100, reflecting competent execution of a complex multi-segment brief within a competitive destination-marketing landscape.
Experience Abu Dhabi operates in a destination-marketing environment defined by intense regional competition. Across the UAE market, Abu Dhabi competes directly with Dubai's well-funded tourism apparatus — including campaigns produced by agencies such as Ogilvy and Starcom for various Dubai government and hospitality mandates — as well as Saudi Arabia's accelerating Vision 2030 tourism push, which has drawn significant international media attention, according to Thenationalnews. In this context, positioning LIWA 2025 as a single-category motorsport event would have left significant audience territory uncontested.
The strategic shift documented in this campaign is explicit. Andre Couto, Creative Director at Serviceplan Middle East, stated plainly: 'It's no longer just about motorsports. Liwa has become a vibrant stage where every passion comes alive — whether you're seeking adrenaline-fueled adventure or a memorable family fun experience.' That repositioning is not merely a creative preference; it reflects a structural reality about how destination events grow their reach and economic contribution over time.
The broader market context supports the strategic rationale. The Middle East and North Africa region recorded approximately eleven percent tourism growth in the relevant period, according to World Bank material. Globally, international tourist arrivals reached approximately 1.4 billion in 2024 and international tourism receipts reached approximately 1.6 trillion US dollars that same year, according to the UN World Tourism Organization via e-unwto.org. Against that backdrop of recovery and expansion, the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi's investment in a high-production campaign to communicate the festival's expanded proposition is consistent with the competitive pressures the UAE tourism sector faces from both regional and international destination brands. The 'Passion in the Spotlight' platform is designed to convert that broader market momentum into measurable event attendance and Abu Dhabi tourism consideration.
Serviceplan Middle East led the creative development of the LIWA 2025 campaign, with Déjà vu serving as production company on the centrepiece brand film. Production credits beyond the agency and production house are not fully documented in publicly available sources, though Creative Director Andre Couto of Serviceplan Middle East is named as the key creative voice behind the campaign's strategic and tonal direction.
The brand film itself operates as a behind-the-scenes document of the Liwa International Festival, designed to make the audience feel embedded in the event rather than sold to. The cinematography foregrounds the physical drama of the Al Dhafra landscape — the scale of the dunes, the dust of the Moreeb Dune Car Championship, the spectacle of fireworks against a desert sky — while weaving in quieter moments that signal the festival's family and cultural dimensions. This tonal duality is the film's core creative challenge: conveying exhilaration and accessibility within the same visual language.
Beyond the film, the campaign deployed a sophisticated Snapchat activation that extended the 'Passion in the Spotlight' platform into interactive territory. The Snapchat component included custom augmented-reality lenses, a pre-event teaser sequence, and a voice-controlled dune-driving game — an execution that placed users physically inside the festival's motorsport world from their own devices. Snapchat ads ran across three phases: before, during, and after the festival itself, creating a campaign arc that sustained audience engagement across the full duration of the 23-day event. This phased digital approach, combining passive cinematic storytelling with active AR participation, reflects a considered understanding of how regional audiences in the United Arab Emirates consume entertainment and travel content across platforms. The integration of Ykone as an influencer and content amplification partner further extended the campaign's organic reach across social channels.
The LIWA 2025 campaign generated measurable audience impact across its Snapchat activation, with verified performance data available for that channel. Ad Awareness increased by eight percentage points overall, and Action Intent increased by two percentage points overall across the Snapchat campaign, according to platform measurement reported via LBBOnline. These figures represent meaningful shifts in a competitive travel and leisure advertising environment where destination campaigns routinely fight for attention against heavily resourced competitors.
The Ad Awareness gain of eight percentage points is particularly significant in the context of the United Arab Emirates market, where consumer exposure to destination-marketing content from Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and international travel brands is sustained and high-volume. Moving awareness at that scale within a single platform activation indicates that the combination of AR lenses, the pre-event teaser, and the phased ad deployment functioned cohesively as a system rather than as disconnected executions.
No verified performance data beyond the Snapchat channel metrics — including box office attendance, earned media reach, or broader digital performance — is publicly available for the LIWA 2025 campaign at the time of writing. The campaign's structural effectiveness, however, is evident in its architecture: a cinematic anchor asset capable of multi-platform distribution, a phased digital strategy that maintained presence before, during, and after the 23-day festival window, and a creative platform broad enough to serve multiple audience segments without diluting the core 'Passion in the Spotlight' proposition. For a destination-marketing campaign of this complexity and scope, that structural coherence is a meaningful indicator of creative maturity from Serviceplan Middle East and the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi.
The LIWA 2025 campaign, created by Serviceplan Middle East for Experience Abu Dhabi, promotes the Liwa International Festival under the theme 'Passion in the Spotlight.' It targets families, motorsport fans, and culture enthusiasts across the UAE using a cinematic brand film and Snapchat augmented-reality activations to communicate the festival's expanded 23-day programme in the Al Dhafra region.
Serviceplan Middle East created the LIWA 2025 campaign for the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi. Déjà vu served as production company on the brand film. According to LBBOnline, the campaign launched on December 20, 2024, supporting a festival that ran from December 13, 2024 to January 4, 2025 across 23 days.
The Snapchat activation for LIWA 2025 included custom augmented-reality lenses, a pre-event teaser, and a voice-controlled dune-driving game. Ads ran before, during, and after the festival. The activation delivered an eight percentage point increase in Ad Awareness and a two percentage point increase in Action Intent, according to data reported via LBBOnline.
The 'Passion in the Spotlight' campaign reflects the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi's effort to position LIWA 2025 beyond its motorsport heritage. In a UAE market where Abu Dhabi competes with Dubai and Saudi Arabia for visitor attention, broadening the festival's appeal to families and culture seekers is a deliberate strategic expansion of the destination's tourism proposition.
LIWA 2025 features the Buggy Torque Challenge, the Moreeb Dune Car Championship, horse racing, hot air balloon rides, fireworks, the Hollywood Circus, and the Liwa Village Souk. The programme spans the Al Dhafra region of the United Arab Emirates and is designed to serve thrill-seekers, families, and culture enthusiasts across a 23-day festival window.
The Liwa International Festival 2025 campaign by Serviceplan Middle East receives a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100. The score reflects competent multi-segment creative execution and a well-structured phased digital strategy, balanced against limited independently verified performance data beyond the Snapchat channel metrics available at the time of assessment.
.webp)
Creative Collaboration Platform: The Backbone of Modern Creative WorkWhat is a creative collaboration platform?Clapboard defines a creative collaboration platform as the operational core for today’s distributed creative teams. This is not a collection of digital collaboration tools stitched together; Clapboard’s system
Understanding the Creative Production MarketplaceWhat is a Creative Production Marketplace?Clapboard defines a creative production marketplace as a structured ecosystem where brands, agencies, and production talent converge to execute video, advertising, and branded content at scale. Unlike the legacy agency or freelanREAD FULL ARTICLE
The Urgent Need for a Creative Production Operating SystemWhy Traditional Creative Production Models Break DownClapboard sees the creative production landscape shifting under pressure. Content velocity is no longer a buzzword—it’s a mandate. Modern advertising demands relentless output across dozens of channels, each wREAD FULL ARTICLE
