Earlier this month, Unilever’s Close Up partnered with music artist Nancy Ajram for a product placement in Ajram’s latest video, Yalla. To further amplify the one-week campaign, Ajram also released a teaser video.

Unilever worked with Omnicom Media Group’s PHD and “social experience” agency Veez to create the campaign. The campaign kicked off on Twitter with a teaser phase a week before the launch of Ajram’s official video. Users were asked to tweet using the hashtag #closetonancy to get an exclusive teaser of the official video. Close Up did not want to do just simple product integration without any buzz or brand association. “Hence, we thought the best period to do it is before the launch date so we can build association between the brand and the artist before the launch of the video,” says Lina Kassem, assistant media manager at Unilever.

Considering Ajram’s active fan base on Twitter, the brand wanted to add a real-time factor to the campaign. And, having previously worked with Veez on Lipton, it decided to rope in the agency to do the same for Close Up. Veez proposed the “tweet to reveal” concept, which ensured that users tweeting with the hashtag #closetonancy automatically received the video link in real time. Since the link worked only once, users has to tweet again using the hashtag to watch the video multiple times, thereby generating more buzz.

The first two days of the campaign saw a 40 percent engagement rate, tapering at 25 percent by the end of the week and about a million interactions on Twitter. The teaser video on YouTube reached 170,000 organic views and the official video – released this weekend – has so far received 400,000 views. Close Up has also sponsored Ajram’s YouTube page with a 100 percent share-of-voice (SOV) ad revenue model to further reinstate the brand association between Close Up and Ajram.

Going forward, the brand says that real-time marketing will be an essential part of its campaigns in 2015 and that it’s important to think outside the box. Just product placement isn’t enough, but going beyond it to create one-on-one engagement with consumers is what’s needed.