The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2025
Fixby's nine-hour film makes cinema audiences live a teen's endless scroll
A nine-hour simulated social feed premiered at Roxy Cinemas Dubai becomes the UAE's longest film and a physical wake-up call to #EndTheScroll.
Fixby · MullenLowe MENA
What it had to solve
Fixby, a UAE organisation that supplies schools with lockable phone pouches, wanted a cultural wake-up call about smartphone addiction in children and teens. Research showed pre-teens and teenagers in the UAE average nine hours and eighteen minutes a day on screens, with 84% of teens judged at risk.
How it works
In January 2025, MullenLowe MENA and Fixby opened the conversation about children's smartphone use by refusing to make a short film about it. 'Don't Look Down' was nine hours long — a deliberately unwatchable simulation of an endless social feed, designed so that anyone who sat through it experienced roughly the same time a UAE pre-teen or teenager spends on a screen each day.
The film premiered exclusively at Roxy Cinemas in Dubai on 15 January 2025. It replicated a scrolling feed punctuated with ads and medical warnings, and wove in a QR code daring audiences to sign the End the Scroll pledge. Fixby, which sells lockable phone pouches that schools use to keep phones out of classrooms, supplied the practical frame: the film was the emotional wake-up call, the pouches the everyday tool.
The arithmetic was the message. With an average of nine hours and eighteen minutes of daily screen time reported for UAE pre-teens and teenagers and 84% of teens judged at risk, the runtime made the statistic physical. 'Don't Look Down' became the UAE's longest film to screen in cinemas, drew over 30,000 sign-ups within 48 hours of the premiere and later surpassed 500,000, and earned a Bronze at the Gerety Awards 2025.
Why it lands
- Matching the film's runtime to the statistic makes the audience feel the problem instead of hearing about it.
- Premiering in a cinema creates the one environment where the target behaviour — scrolling — cannot be performed.
- Embedding the call to action inside the film converts endurance into an immediate, trackable pledge.
- Pairing the artistic stunt with Fixby's phone pouches gives the provocation a practical, school-ready follow-through.
What it did
The campaign drew more than 30,000 sign-ups within 48 hours, grew past 150,000 and later 500,000 signatures on endthescroll.com, and delivered 500 million impressions; it also became the UAE's longest film to air in cinemas and won a Gerety Awards 2025 Bronze.
What you can take
Instead of telling people a statistic about attention, make them physically experience it: choosing a runtime equal to the problem turns the medium itself into the argument.
Since then
Within 48 hours of the 15 January 2025 premiere the campaign had passed 30,000 sign-ups; MullenLowe MENA later reported it had grown beyond 150,000 and then 500,000 signatures on endthescroll.com, alongside 500 million impressions. Additional screenings and school-focused activations were planned to keep the conversation going, and the work became a global case study for purpose-led creativity, winning Agency of the Year recognition for MullenLowe MENA at the Gerety Awards 2025 plus a Bronze for the film itself.
Sources
- MullenLowe MENA Premiers UAE's Longest Film on Teen Smartphone Addiction
- DON'T LOOK DOWN - FIXBY (Gerety Awards 2025 winner entry)
- MullenLowe MENA Wins Agency of the Year at Gerety Awards 2025
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