Billboard Arabia relaunched Saudi icon Etab with AI and won Dubai Lynx's PR Grand Prix

Etab, Saudi Arabia's first female musical icon, died in 2007 and her music — including the anthem 'Ya Saudi, Ya Saudi' — was largely unknown to a young Saudi generation. Billboard Arabia, a new local edition from Saudi Research and Media Group, needed to land in a music scene that was re-emerging after years of being sidelined. The obvious move would have been a respectful heritage tribute aimed at older fans.

Instead, SRMG's creative unit SRMG Labs treated her catalogue as a new release. Advanced AI brought Etab's voice and image back for a remastered version of the anthem, launched on Saudi National Day 2024 with a stylized music video, a digital campaign, an urban fashion line inspired by her 1980s style, and out-of-home media. The campaign was framed as 'The Second Release' — a contemporary music launch, not a memorial.

The spectacle turned nostalgia into news: the work earned a Gold and a Silver Lion at Cannes Lions 2025 (fewer than 0.78% of entries win Gold), the PR Grand Prix at Dubai Lynx 2025, and a Cultural Impact Award from Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Culture, while establishing Billboard Arabia as a curator of Saudi musical heritage.

Treat a forgotten icon's archive as a brand-new release

AI resurrection created a spectacle that earned coverage instead of bought reach

Launching on National Day gave the release a built-in national moment and audience

Staging it as a new release made an archive relevant to young listeners

It doubled as Billboard Arabia's brand statement: a media house that makes culture, not just reports it

When a cultural asset is stranded in the past, don't museum-ify it: re-release it with today's tools and rituals, so the archive behaves like a launch rather than a memory.

The Second Release became a flagship for SRMG Labs, which went on to win further awards at regional festivals including Athar and Cannes. The campaign showed how a media company's lab could turn editorial heritage into brand-building entertainment, and the AI-driven revival sparked wider discussion in the region about using new tools to reconnect generations with their cultural icons.