2020/2021 Winners & Shortlists

Background

Over 2.5M pilgrims come to Mecca for Hajj from all over the world. To respect the sanctity of the pilgrimage, pilgrims refrain from using any alcohol-based or fragrant products. However, given the scorching summer weather of Saudi Arabia finding effective and Ihram friendly hygiene products is a challenge for pilgrims. Unilever created the Hajj pack to provide pilgrims a healthy and protected journey during their pilgrimage, without any compromise. We created a fragrance-free bundle of products that could be purchased and used in key markets. To drive the full potential of the Hajj pack we had to build awareness amongst the pilgrims. Among these 600k are Saudi residents, 1.3M are foreigners, and the remaining majority come from Egypt and Pakistan (48% of total traffic). We were also challenged to drive the pilgrims to instore purchase as the products were not available online.

Describe the strategy

We focused our campaign on key insights on the pilgrim journey and understanding how people plan and prepare for Hajj. These insights formed the targeting signals in our campaign.The journey of those visiting KSA to perform Hajj and the journey of residents performing Hajj differs in preparation and the timeline. Visitors start their preparation up to 2-4 months in advance: booking their flights, hotels, and preparing for the pilgrimage. Our target audience was: MF 18+, performing pilgrimage. It was important for us to differentiate between residents and visitors. Moreover, we had to drive people to the physical location to purchase the products, while targeting them on the go to ensure high reach and penetration. Therefore, we focused our campaign on mobile, which is one of the most penetrating and fastest growing media platforms in KSA (more than 80% smartphone penetration). Key platforms included: YouTube, Facebook, Wego, Twitter, Google (search).

Describe the execution

We invested 70% of our budget in mobile and worked with different data sources to identify carrier and location signals. This helped fuel our campaign and formed the focal point of delivering the right content to consumers who were closest to where the product was available. Through programmatic and machine learning, we built an agile always-on content engine that served product reminders: to use the right product, at the right time, at the right place. We used geo targeted location based ads to help consumers find the nearest outlet that sells the product. This helped us reach the consumers when they were planning the trip, when the journey got closer, and when they reached Saudi Arabia. The user journey followed this timeline: - Awareness: Pre-Hajj 30th Jul - 5th Aug - Consideration: Arrival 1st-6th Aug - Purchase: Hajj 7th-15th Aug

List the results

Unilever identified a key opportunity during the Hajj Pilgrimage to provide Ihram friendly hygiene product bundles - this in turn delivered better consumer experience, leading to overall increased brand loyalty. This data-driven, yet human approach to marketing during Hajj had incremental reach. The overall scale surpassed 40M impressions served over 2 weeks, with 70% of impressions on mobile, and 175,000 clicks. This had positive business impact with a 15% increase in sales growth in Modern Trade, while brands performance also showed a significant increase during this campaign: - LifeBuoy; increase of 720 BPS and 7.2% market share in Mecca, and an increase of 495 BPS and 4.6% market share in Medina - Signal; toothpaste grew by 100 BPS, capturing the highest Market share in the last 5 months - Vaseline grew by 279 BPS and up by 2.79% value Market share in Mecca during Hajj season