2016 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

STC wanted to maintain its leadership in international Roaming services, which can be attributed to its global exposure and wide network of regional and international strategic partnerships, enabling it to provide the “best and lowest” rates to its customers. The challenge was to dilute the perception of Roaming as being a very expensive service, which was driving STC subscribers to switch to local SIMs when travelling. We came up with a strategy addressing our target audience (the Young Millennials) that would inform them about the various advantages of the Roaming service from STC, while entertaining them simultaneously. This translated into an amusing online show – ‘Rayi7 Rayi7’ – in which a group of friends travel with a Puppet character and enjoy new experiences together on vacation, without internet hiccups. The Puppet represented a left-behind friend who still managed to be part of the fun! Results exceeded all expectations (over 10 millions views).

The Brief

STC wanted to maintain its leadership in international Roaming services, which can be attributed to its global exposure and wide network of regional and international strategic partnerships, enabling it to provide the “best and lowest” rates to its customers. The challenge was to dilute the perception of Roaming as being a very expensive service, which was driving STC subscribers to switch to local SIMs when travelling. We developed a strategy addressing our target audience (the Young Millennials) that would inform them about the various advantages of the Roaming service from STC, while engaging with them and entertaining them simultaneously.

Execution

We created an entertaining online show - ‘Rayi7 Rayi7’ – with a cast of well-known YouTube celebrities, each episode indirectly communicating a key RTB of the STC Roaming service. The campaign began with a teaser for the episode, driving attention to STC’s destination entertainment site. Simultaneously, a targeted online campaign drove additional traffic and created hype around the episode. YouTube pre-rolls supported with online and social media ads, driving traffic to the episode’s on-site page. TV, print & outdoor were used to help build awareness and equity, featuring clips from the show and highlighting its key messages. An activation at STC Showrooms saw the Puppet standing in as a customer service agent, with the real agent operating remotely via the Puppet’s “iPad face” – leaving customers surprised and amused!

The popularity of the show led to our Puppet becoming the ‘talk of the town’ and the face of STC Roaming. Results far exceeded the original targets: • Viewership reached 10 million – 166% over target, making STC number one in branded YouTube shows (Source: Campaign Analytics & YouTube). • Several episodes surpassed 50% organic views, 40% view-through rates and 70% average view duration. Recurrent viewing grew, with over 60% of viewers having watched a previous episode. 50x increase in YouTube and Google searches, with episode titles leading top-of-mind telco searches. Daily organic visitor activity on the channel tripled, year-on-year (Source: Google Analytics). • New channel subscription up 5% (original KPI was 2%). (Source: Campaign Analytics). • Roaming product subscriptions achieved a 14% increase, compared to last year’s data (original KPI was a 5% increase) (Source: STC Sales Data). • The campaign was recognized as a “best practice benchmark” for Google in the Middle East. • The total earned publicity value for the STC Roaming is $320,000.

The Strategy

We came up with a strategy addressing our target audience (the Young Millennials) that would inform them about the various advantages of the Roaming service from STC, while entertaining them simultaneously. This translated into an amusing online show – ‘Rayi7 Rayi7’ – in which a group of friends travel with a Puppet character and enjoy new experiences together on vacation, with no internet hiccups. The Puppet represented a left-behind friend who still managed to be part of the fun!