2020/2021 Winners & Shortlists

Background

2020 is a year that seems as though it was designed to keep people away from each other. With all the “lock-downs” and the international flight bans, many people were deprived from their usual travels. All major celebrations and gatherings were brought to a halt. For Muslims around the world, it meant not being able to participate in Hajj, a main pillar of Islam that many spend their entire lives preparing for. Eventually, Hajj would only be held for 1000 pilgrims. stc had grown accustomed to helping Saudi Arabia conduct a successful Hajj season year after year, providing their network and on ground services to over 3 Million pilgrims yearly. Despite the low number of pilgrims in 2020, stc was determined to do the same.

Describe the strategy

stc has always serviced the Hajj pilgrims, not only through their network services, but also on-ground. They sent of volunteers to greet pilgrims, hand out water, care for the elderly and assist them. Although the amount of people allowed to visit Makkah was limited, stc still wanted to provide their services to all Muslims as they did yearly, but how could they do that from afar? We realized that every year, people send their prayers with their loved ones on notes to be prayed on their behalf in front of Haram. So we decided to create a platform that showcased our insight through its design and enabled all prayers to reach Makkah. Enter “ولك مثلها”. The name of the initiative ولك مثلها – same to you– comes from a Hadith that teaches that angels always reply ‘Amen, and may you receive the like’ whenever one prays for an absent brother

Describe the execution

The news that Hajj was only going to be held for 1000 pilgrims in 2020 arrived only one month before Hajj was due. The ideation, design and web-development all had to be done within that timeframe. We needed to bring our insight to life. Every year thousands of Muslims sent their prayers on little notes with their Pilgrim friends and relatives to be read in front of the Kaabah. So we created an online platform allowing Muslims worldwide to share their prayers on digital notes. Those were then displayed on a virtual wall where they were picked and read by the few pilgrims in front of the Holy Kaabah. Senders were notified once their prayers were chosen and delivered. The platform went live on stc’s content platform and was pushed on their SM accounts as promoted posts.

List the results

The Walak Methluha platform went live within a very tight timeframe. From the moment the changes in Hajj were announced, we only had one month for ideation, approvals and development and the platform went live only a couple of days prior to Hajj. The platform generated: • 23,954 Total number of Unique website visits is 23,954 ** • 61,028 Clicks directed to the landing page ** • 39.2% Converted from clicks to website visits ** • 0.55% Converted to adding a prayer ** Now that the platform experienced a "soft-launch" in 2019 and awareness is raised regarding what it is and how it works, we are planning on promoting it with a wider reach in the coming years to drive more traffic to it and enable people to connect to Hajj on a sustained platform. ** stc Data