2019 Winners & Shortlists

Why is this work relevant for Brand Experience & Activation?

In a media landscape that continues to challenge, brands constantly look for the latest innovation to apply to shiny new channels. We took the opportunity to step back and understand audience behaviours, before running for the shiny new toy by default. We ticked the digital box with wider digital media executions; yet the media innovation in our campaign was considering traditional mediums (in this case TV) as the leading channel in a forward thinking campaign with a compelling media mix, delivering a higher uplift in brand and ad awareness for Mobily than at any point over the previous year.

Background

As Saudi Arabia’s 2nd placed telco (by market share), Mobily understood the value of mass media in uplifting awareness for a challenger brand: - 91% of Saudis describe daily time spent on TV as medium to heavy (vs. 95% for online) - Average time spent on TV is 1-2 hours per day – equal to social & mobile - TV is the top device for accessing broadcast programming for 79% of Saudis (vs. 64% on other devices combined) (source: GlobalWebIndex). Facts such as these prompted Mobily to allocate almost 20% of their 2019 media budget to TV. We had to prove the decision would bear fruit; by trialing an innovative approach to Mobily’s final brand campaign of 2018 to improve month on month brand and ad awareness by at least 3 percentage points (per internal market trackers), that could guide 2019’s activity.

Describe the creative idea.

Knowing where audiences were was one thing; we also needed insights into their activity. Our answer lay in the modern interpretation of Second Screening. No longer a metaphor for a hashtag asking people to ‘join the conversation’, modern Second Screening has shifted to closed group messaging. - 40% of second screen behaviour by Saudis in 2018 took place on messaging apps (from 3rd place in 2017). Social media and web browsing had shifted to 2nd and 3rd. - Of this, 85% related to the TV broadcast. - Short form was key. Paradoxically, on Snapchat (Saudi Arabia’s 3rd most popular app) more people actually used messaging features than sharing photo snaps. Whereas on text bsed app WhatsApp, visual & text messaging were equals (source: GlobalWebIndex) Our strategy needed to find a way for Mobily to infiltrate closed messaging in a way that would deliver uplifts in brand and ad awareness.

Describe the strategy.

Insights confirmed that 85% of conversation during TV was about what the on screen broadcast at the time. Therefore the strategy could either focus on being always on; or focus on passion points during the broadcast as conversation starters. Whilst the former would lead to more conversations, identifying always on moments in real time for TV didn’t seem feasible. So, we concluded that a carefully crafted message delivered during a passion point of TV viewing was a perfect way to enhance the emotion people would be feeling at any point. Warm messages during happy scenes; emotionally anguished messages for sad scenes; expressions of shock during plot twists; provocative prompts during arguments…all the emotions a gripping TV broadcast can make you feel. By guiding the conversation at the point where it starts, we hoped to own a share of it.

Describe the execution

Leading regional network Rotana offered advertising during prime time film broadcast segments; we went a step further and requested the option to customise messages as overlays. Except, not as traditional text. Type happy, sad, shock or love into any smartphone and it suggests an emoji as a replacement. Platforms and users see this as the future of messaging; we decided to embrace it. Our overlays flashed up a brand ad positioning Mobily’s services as the enabler of conversations, alongside the relevant emoji related to the current scene – designed to prompt a “point-shoot-share-discuss” action. We ran 69 messages during 23 films over ten days. In support, we ran an equivalent YouTube campaign, plus three interactive outdoor ads and a Snapchat lens. These executions detected emotions based on face shapes (outdoor ads using mirrors and cameras) overlaying an emoji onto the viewers face to spark conversation with a picture.

List the results.

Our objective was to improve month on month brand and ad awareness by at least 3 percentage points for the latest brand campaign. Brand trackers showed: - Spontaneous ad awareness measured during the campaign increased by 4 points month-on-month to 49% (4 points higher than the 12-month moving average). - Campaign message recall up 6 points compared to the previous two Mobily brand campaigns. Individual measures of appeal, understanding, uniqueness and relevance all higher than previously - Overall top of mind brand awareness (measured as the percentage of customers recalling a telco operator as their first choice) increased by 3 points to 33%. This was the overall measure that Mobily generally used to gauge brand market share. Our campaign improved on all core brand health metrics, preparing Mobily for the year ahead with a far greater understanding of the audience, their behaviours and ways to reach them.