Mobily Gifts Smiles to Its Saudi Audience With Facebook AR Filter Campaign
“Mobily continuously aims to innovate and enhance the way it engages with its customers. Experimenting with AR is not new for Mobily, but this new take on the technology showed how it can deliver campaign objectives and goals while still being fun – and, as a result, unlock endless possibilities for new types of engagement for future campaigns.” – Loui Kofiah, Brand Communication Director at Mobily.
“Augmented reality (AR) is a major trend in Saudi Arabia, where consumers rely on this technology to enhance their digital experience and connection with brands. By launching its AR filter, Mobily successfully increased brand affinity and shared positivity among consumers in a fun and engaging manner.” – Elie Antoun, Head of Telecom & Media at Facebook
Mobily is Saudi Arabia’s second GSM and second largest licensed telecom operator. When it launched in 2004, Mobily gave Saudi users the ability to choose their telecom provider for the first time and gained over one million new customers in its first year; it now serves more than 14 million customers in the Kingdom. Over the years, Mobily identified and addressed customers’ unmet needs, and developed a new segment strategy that reshaped the face of sports sponsorship in KSA.
In an effort to connect with its Saudi audience on an emotional level and put a smile on their face during the holy month of Ramadan, since masking and social distancing precautions resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic had taken those smiles away, Mobily involved creative Facebook Marketing Partner (FMP) Milklab to develop an innovative augmented reality (AR) filter.
This AR filter, which was promoted through a Facebook campaign between April 23 and May 5, 2021, allowed users to share a variety of smiles and gave them a chance to play a mini-game with a premium smartphone as a potential reward.
The campaign’s primary goal was to help raise awareness around positivity and happiness during this special time of year, and to align Mobily’s brand with the idea that every smile is a gift worth sharing.
The initiative resonated with the audience, lifting ad recall by 8.8 percentage points and message association – a hard-to-lift metric – by 1.5 percentage points. Indeed, through this collaboration, Mobily was not only able to associate its brand with gifting smiles during Ramadan, but also to test and leverage innovative solutions. In this setup, the use of an AR filter gamified the user’s ad experience and transformed it, from a simple interaction with an image or a video, into a deeper engagement with the brand as a whole.
Here’s what Loui Kofiah, Brand Communication Director at Mobily, told us about the campaign.
What were the main goals for the digital campaign that ran on Facebook platforms?
The main goal was to lift brand awareness and help associate the brand Mobily with positivity and happiness during the holy month of Ramadan. We also wanted to engage with users through a fun game, which gave them the chance to test a new AR filter, enjoy their photos with a smile, and eventually get the chance to win a smartphone with Mobily.
Why did you choose Facebook’s marketing solutions, out of many alternatives?
The sophistication of the technology, the turn-over speed, and the creative value brought by Facebook allowed us to utilize the tools and interact with the Facebook team as partners, to deliver a positive and fun message.
Which Facebook/Instagram solutions/products did you use for this campaign?
We worked closely with creative Facebook Marketing Partner (FMP) Milklab to design an AR filter which we then promoted to our audience in the kingdom via a brand awareness campaign. Developing the filter required a cross-effort between the Mobily team, the agency team (Mindshare), the creative agency (M&C Saatchi), the creative FMP (Milklab), and the Facebook team. A series of sessions allowed us all to align on the creative concept and operational aspects of the filter.
What were the results of the campaign and did you achieve your goals?
We were able to generate good results for this Ramadan campaign. Not only did we reach six million users in KSA and generated around 14 million impressions, but we observed an uplift across different key brand metrics that clearly showed the campaign’s impact.
Which measurement methods did you use to gain new learnings?
We used a Facebook brand lift study to measure any incremental uplift in brand metrics across three different objectives: ad recall, campaign awareness, and message association. The results of the brand lift study were remarkable. We were able to lift ad recall by 8.8 percentage points and message association by 1.5 percentage points. Both uplifts were higher than the averages observed on the market and in the industry, which shows the strong impact the AR filter had on associating Mobily with gifting a smile.
