STARCOM MEDIAVEST GROUP Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Brief Explanation
Saudi women spend a lot of time online but can’t freely express themselves. Furthermore, they don’t like to associate themselves with menstrual pad brands, given the embarrassment factor.
Always, the market leader in menstrual pads, wanted to connect with Saudi women online to build its community.
Always launched the first online march where instead of showing their face, women shared footage of their steps moving for a better tomorrow. This gave women a platform to express themselves and state their belief, dream, or purpose.
This brought to life the Always purpose of women empowerment through the lens of Saudi women.
Results and Effectiveness
The Online March exceeded our targets for user-generated content and community growth:
- It generated more than 45 million impressions on Facebook and Instagram, and 4.6 million print impressions.
- The participation mechanism allowed over 5,000 women to express themselves with content they submitted. There were +1 million interactions around that content and +2.6 million organic views on the videos.
- Brand affinity has also improved as a result: the Facebook brand page got a +12.51% fan growth (+10,000 new fans in two months), while the Instagram page received +5,500 new Instagram followers (starting from zero).
Creative Execution
Always launched an online march for women to move forward towards a better tomorrow.
This gave women a platform to express themselves in videos by only showing their steps while stating their belief, dream, or purpose.
The media role was to create the initial snowball and then allow the momentum to build itself. Always promoted key posts to help discoverability of the movement, which helped people going beyond paid impressions, as they organically engaged with user-generated content.
Women could post to either Instagram or Facebook, while the brand would help give visibility to the content.
Insights, Strategy and the Idea
Broadcast and media are subject to censorship by authorities in Saudi Arabia.
While women around the world share their lives online, a Saudi woman is not socially permitted to show a picture of herself online or protest for a cause.
Always saw an opportunity to allow women to express themselves online, away from typical censorship restrictions, without showing their face: a movement of user-generated videos around women empowerment that is curated and compiled into longer stories by Always.
Women discovered this movement on Facebook and Instagram through influencers, a trending hashtag #MoveForward (and its Arabic equivalent), and posts by Always.