An Exclusive Track, and the Problem of Giving It Somewhere to Live.

A brand partnership for the Adidas Club series, with a remix attached.

El Waili remixed Mabsouta, the track by DiscoMasr and Almas, for the campaign. The remix went out exclusively on Anghami, which is what the deal was worth, and is also what created the interesting problem: an exclusive track has no natural home on the artist’s own grid.

The brief on the table was a straightforward endorsement film, built around the shoes. That gets the brand what it paid for. It does not give the music a reason to be there, and it does not sound like El Waili, whose audience knows him for the work rather than for appearing in front of a camera.

The decision

Make the context the track was missing, not another advert.

Three things had to hold at once. Adidas and Anghami needed the campaign moment they were paying for. The remix needed a reason to appear on El Waili’s feed at all. And whatever we made had to be worth watching on its own terms, because a piece of brand content nobody wants to watch serves nobody, least of all the brand.

What happened

We made something light, and let the music do the rest.

Home-video in feel, a little rough and a little unserious, with oversized sunglasses as the running joke and his screen time kept short. It matched how genuinely funny he is in person rather than asking him to perform enthusiasm, and it gave the remix a place on his grid that made sense to the people already following him.

One reel, one platform moment, and a track that reached his audience without ever leaving its exclusive.