2019 Winners & Shortlists

Background.

Within the economic slowdown the battle to win over customer mobile phone subscriptions was heating up. With more mobile phone subscriptions in the kingdom than people, the three mobile operators (STC, Mobily & Zain) in Saudi face fierce competition to increase their SIM card sales: from competitive price plans and Cutthroat retail experiences to Bloodthirsty 3rd party collaborations- this meant only one thing increased costs and the need for additional manpower. This meant even more pressure on STC operations- STC had an ongoing mission to aggressively increase app usage and stop retail stores from getting overcrowded and to drive efficiencies In order to grow its customer base,and increase sim sales, STC had to outsmart the market dynamics, and find a more efficient and effective way of gaining customers.

Describe the creative idea.

A sim card delivery Service : A first in the Kingdom We created A SIM card delivery option and what better way to activate this than the already existing MYSTC app, which offered other services to customers such as payment and monitoring of bills. No matter the location, customers could expect their SIM card to be delivered to them within an hour. To ensure its success and to incentivize employees, STC salespeople could also benefit from this service too. The first to respond to the request, just like in ride-hailing apps, would get to deliver the SIM card AND cash in a commission.

Describe the strategy.

With rising costs in Saudi, a nation that had historically been time rich, was now increasingly time poor. With added pressure people were looking for solutions and services that could make life easier1. Registering a new sim typically required the customer to go through traffic, go to the branch, wait in line and fill out paperwork in order to activate a sim. This presented two challenges: 1- the journey to completion was very long, but 2- the experience and journey was one and the same as our competitors. We wanted to disrupt the journey and the experience, so benchmarked other brands that had disrupted service and product: immediately the likes of Uber, and Deliveroo came to mind- what if we could make the sim registration just as easy? We spotted an opportunity to make this process simpler, effortless and outsmart the competition.

Describe the execution.

Saudi Arabia is very much a fast food nation, and everything is available by delivery. With a range of new fast food options coming up by the day all offered by delivery,to give our sim delivery service some relevance to mass consumers, we decided to remodel the SIM packages as fast food packages –giving us a playful and humorous platform to engage audiences. We went for 5 iconic shaped boxes:pizza,burger, sushi, salad, sandwich. Upon ordering a SIM online, customers quickly welcomed the new packages with a label that helped them choose the best plan that satisfied their taste. We created beautiful in branch posters to communicate the new service. Our social media platforms playfully engaged our audience, making humorous posts to build awareness and engagement around the service. To close the deal, we partnered with food delivery services to include our sim delivery as a restaurant option on their applications.

List the results.

SIM card sales exceed 210K for the first 6 months, putting STC ahead of the competition.1 Noting that with this new feature, MySTC app Total ID registration reached 4.9M compared to 3.34M in 2017 and the monthly active users increased from 2.4M in 2017 to 4.3 in 2018 representing 88% from total registered users. 1 The feature has won “The Innovation Award – Operator in the Telecom World MEA Awards event” for the its SIM delivery through MySTC as innovative solution (digital transformation). That’s how our solution-based idea not only helped us outsell competition but also reaffirmed our position as Telco SIM leader.