Johnny Walker ads aim to improve morale in Lebanon

At the beginning of last month, dabitch alerted us to a campaign created by Leo Burnett for Audi Bank in Lebanon designed to run in the middle of the war and suggested it was the beginning of a trend. Looks like she was right.
Yet another ad, also created by Leo Burnett (H&C Leo Burnett, the agency's Beirut affiliate), was created for similar reasons for Johnny Walker. Using the global campaign idea of "Keep on Walking", this billboard and print ads were run to improve morale.

Diageo's internal marketing code prohibits the company's ads from taking political positions, said Alicia Tetlow, a spokeswoman, adding that the campaign in Lebanon had simply been intended to "capture a popular mood about moving forward."
Farid Chehab, chief creative officer for Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East at Leo Burnett, the agency that created the ad, agreed that its purpose was to improve morale, not to make a political statement. But he added that the ads represented "a new idiom in terms of how far you can go.