2022 Winners & Shortlists

Why is this work relevant for Glass: The Award for Change

The world has been getting more aware(woke) towards social causes that have been affecting growth and equality globally. These causes have to do with race, gender and culture. Most of them engraved stereotypes that our efforts are trying to correct in order to give everyone a chance towards better quality of life and equality of opportunity. This work is relevant for Glass because we are trying to play our role in putting our culture under the correct light. Championing ourselves in the new global economy because nobody will do it for us.

Background

Alexa is a voice AI that can help you with tasks, entertainment, general information, and more. Whether you’re at home or on the go, Alexa is designed to make your life easier by letting your voice control your world. Amazon's purpose is “to be Earth’s most customer-centric company..." and inspired by that we wanted to launch one of their products; Alexa; in Saudi Arabia. However, we they were not launching it in "Arabic", but Alexa was going to be launched in Najdi. The actual dialect spoken in the central region of the Kingdom and widely understood in Saudi Arabia. While the official written language in KSA is Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), in everyday life, Arabic speakers use dialectal forms of Arabic, with many vernacular variations. Our objective was to populate and enrich Alexa with the content and references that allow it to be part of the culture, not an intruder.

Describe the cultural / social / political climate in your region and the significance of your campaign within this context

Saudi Arabia has been experiencing its renaissance since 2016 with the launch of Vision 2030. A game plan towards the goal of the Kingdom of becoming an integral player in the global economy, as well as improving the quality of life and all of this with an overlying tone of empowering and exporting our culture. To show the world that we are not the "Forbidden Kingdom" which is ambiguous. We share a lot of values, needs and wants of the world. Starting with gender equality by empowering women, to how human equality by how the Kingdom provided equal and free Covid care to citizens and non citizens alike, even illegal resident through vaccinations and medical treatment for all. And this is how people know you, through your actions. Also, when people know of you, they need to start understanding how to talk to you and deal with you. This is where we are introducing ourselves. Our values. Our heritage. Our way of life. Through how we do business and the content we share with the world.

Describe the creative idea

Like we mentioned before. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), is not the "Standard" way of speaking in Saudi Arabia. We speak our own dialect of Arabic, which is more rooted to our history, our heritage, events that affected our generations. It's the equivalent of the difference between "soccer" and "football" between the US and UK while they both supposedly speak english, these 2 words have different rules and types of people who follow them. That's why our campaign was called "Alexa Gets You" "أليكسا تفهمك". Gets you because it uses the words the represent a certain action or description specific to Saudi. Not a generic word that only communicates function, but communicate warmth and culture.

Describe the strategy

Our angle was to get the buy in of our potential target audience in Alexa as a legitimate and genuinely cultured AI was to associate with 6 brands that have been a part of the life of the Saudi people for a long time. From food, delivery services and even mindfulness apps like Dominos, Jahez and Tawazon.

Describe the execution

The roll out of the campaign started with the launch event on the 7th of January where the regional team interacted live in Najdi with Alexa on stage. Afterwards we announced that it's now live with a tweet. The content created and fed into Alexa was carefully selected based on different cultural aspects (Humor, Adult and children stories, Poetry ). When it comes to the creation, we made sure that the poems where written and recited in a way that is true to the beduin nature. The stories where already imbedded in Saudi culture but we gave them a more modern twist. Even the jokes where done in a funny lame manner that resonates with our way of humor.

Describe the results / impact

Our campaign was lead by the people before we launched the official campaign. The campaign line "Alexa get you" started being used as a hashtag on social conversations before Amazon released it as a brand. Alexa became part of our daily routine with its ability to understand our religious routines on Friday and helping the visually impaired community by making Alexa a pillar of their mobility. People started testing it with difficult questions about how to prepare extremely local food as well as people with vision impairment felt safer use it as a guide in their daily life. The content organically generated by the users resulted in: 1. 15.2 million views 2. Almost 2 million engaged through liking, shares and comments

Why is this work relevant for PR?

The world has been getting more aware(woke) towards social causes that have been affecting growth and equality globally. These causes have to do with race, gender and culture. Most of them engraved stereotypes that our efforts are trying to correct in order to give everyone a chance towards better quality of life and equality of opportunity. This work is relevant for Glass because we are trying to play our role in putting our culture under the correct light. Championing ourselves in the new global economy because nobody will do it for us.

Background

Alexa is a voice AI that can help you with tasks, entertainment, general information, and more. Whether you’re at home or on the go, Alexa is designed to make your life easier by letting your voice control your world. Amazon's purpose is “to be Earth’s most customer-centric company..." and inspired by that we wanted to launch one of their products; Alexa; in Saudi Arabia. However, we they were not launching it in "Arabic", but Alexa was going to be launched in Najdi. The actual dialect spoken in the central region of the Kingdom and widely understood in Saudi Arabia. While the official written language in KSA is Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), in everyday life, Arabic speakers use dialectal forms of Arabic, with many vernacular variations. Our objective was to populate and enrich Alexa with the content and references that allow it to be part of the culture, not an intruder.

Describe the creative idea (20% of vote)

Like we mentioned before. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), is not the "Standard" way of speaking in Saudi Arabia. We speak our own dialect of Arabic, which is more rooted to our history, our heritage, events that affected our generations. It's the equivalent of the difference between "soccer" and "football" between the US and UK while they both supposedly speak english, these 2 words have different rules and types of people who follow them. That's why our campaign was called "Alexa Gets You" "أليكسا تفهمك". Gets you because it uses the words the represent a certain action or description specific to Saudi. Not a generic word that only communicates function, but communicate warmth and culture.

Describe the PR strategy (30% of vote)

Our angle was to get the buy in of our potential target audience in Alexa as a legitimate and genuinely cultured AI was to associate with 6 brands that have been a part of the life of the Saudi people for a long time. From food, delivery services and even mindfulness apps like Dominos, Jahez and Tawazon.

Describe the PR execution (20% of vote)

The roll out of the campaign started with the launch event on the 7th of January where the regional team interacted live in Najdi with Alexa on stage. Afterwards we announced that it's now live with a tweet. The content created and fed into Alexa was carefully selected based on different cultural aspects (Humor, Adult and children stories, Poetry ). When it comes to the creation, we made sure that the poems where written and recited in a way that is true to the beduin nature. The stories where already imbedded in Saudi culture but we gave them a more modern twist. Even the jokes where done in a funny lame manner that resonates with our way of humor.

List the results (30% of vote)

Our campaign was lead by the people before we launched the official campaign. The campaign line "Alexa get you" started being used as a hashtag on social conversations before Amazon released it as a brand. Alexa became part of our daily routine with its ability to understand our religious routines on Friday and helping the visually impaired community by making Alexa a pillar of their mobility. People started testing it with difficult questions about how to prepare extremely local food as well as people with vision impairment felt safer use it as a guide in their daily life. The content organically generated by the users resulted in: 1. 15.2 million views 2. Almost 2 million engaged through liking, shares and comments

Please tell us about the social behaviour and / or cultural insights that inspired your work

Saudi Arabia has been experiencing its renaissance since 2016 with the launch of Vision 2030. A game plan towards the goal of the Kingdom of becoming an integral player in the global economy, as well as improving the quality of life and all of this with an overlying tone of empowering and exporting our culture. To show the world that we are not the "Forbidden Kingdom" which is ambiguous. We share a lot of values, needs and wants of the world. Starting with gender equality by empowering women, to how human equality by how the Kingdom provided equal and free Covid care to citizens and non citizens alike, even illegal resident through vaccinations and medical treatment for all. And this is how people know you, through your actions. Also, when people know of you, they need to start understanding how to talk to you and deal with you. This is where we are introducing ourselves. Our values. Our heritage. Our way of life. Through how we do business and the content we share with the world.