Twitter Announces #BestofTweets 2020 in MENA

This year was particularly challenging for brands in the region as they navigated through the global pandemic. Through it, all, marketers found a way to step up and take action to inform, support, and entertain people during an objectively chaotic year - and Twitter allowed them to connect with their audiences in real-time. As the year comes to a close, Twitter is honoring the brands worth remembering from a year we’ll never forget.

Stephanie Terroir, Head of Twitter Next, MENA said, “There’s never been a more challenging year to be a marketer, but despite it all, we've seen some incredible work on Twitter. Whether they're tapping into our conversational insights, creating a meaningful connection with customers during an objectively chaotic time or using our product suite to completely revamp their launch plan - marketers have creatively used Twitter to help their brand stay agile and relevant this year. As we look back on the toughest of years, marketers are curious to know... who broke through? What grabbed people’s attention?”

Here are the ten most creative campaigns of the year we’ll never forget:

Best “how’d they do that?” campaign: @stc_ksa

To cement itself as a digital company brand, STC wanted to go out to the market with a unique activation that mirrors its ambitions. STC wanted to reveal the last phase of its campaign a bit differently on Twitter, through a unique and highly engaging activation. Under their campaign umbrella (يلا_نروح_أبعد#: ‘Let’s go further’), STC wanted to push everyone to go further on Twitter to reveal their new brand manifesto video. Using the Periscope API, Twitter developed technology from scratch to ask audiences to tap on the Periscope hearts to go further and gradually unveil the full video. A progress bar, featuring four milestones, was being filled in accordance to the hearts being tapped and each milestone revealed a bit more of the video - until the bar was filled and the complete video was revealed. In less than 2.5 hours, over 95K unique viewers and 62K likes helped reveal the full video of their final phase of rebranding.

Best campaign for creating connections from the couch: @TheEmirates

This summer, the UAE Nation Brand, a national project that aims to share the country’s journey of development as an inspiring story with the world, leveraged Twitter to launch the Hope Probe - the Arab world’s first mission to Mars. It produced a video to encourage tune in to the live broadcast of the mission, which revealed the first Arabic countdown in history. In collaboration with OMD, Twitter developed its “like to remind” custom solution which notified those who opted in - by liking the tweet - to watch the countdown. The UAE Nation Brand also utilized Twitter’s video website card feature to drive people to the Emirates Mars Mission’s website by running it under a video views objective, which resulted in a 50.26% view-through rate.

When asked about how many custom solutions Twitter introduces in a year, Terrior replied, “ It’s a range. We have the more accessible custom solutions such as the Like to Remind, the Retweet to Remind, and the Like to Subscribe. These have higher demand because they require less time to be built than the fully custom solutions - like the STC API program that we developed from scratch which required a few months versus a few weeks. Brands don’t always have the luxury of time to plan their campaigns well in advance to be able to develop custom solutions. And custom isn’t always the go-to answer. Our product suite can work extremely well without the custom integrations too.”

Best campaign for our thirst of sports: @Mobily

Mobily partnered with Millenium Arabia’s Saudi Gamer (@SaudiGamer) to produce a series of episodes around Mobily Fight Club - a unique concept that provides fans with exciting content centered around the popular fighting game Tekken 7. The four-week fight club consists of a weekly tournament featuring a match between two well-known amateur and professional gaming influencers residing in Saudi Arabia. Filmed in a virtual studio, the episodes include short lighthearted interviews with the players prior to the tournament where they discuss their strategies, predictions around the game, and their winning attitude. The show allowed Mobily and Mindshare to connect with the brand’s audiences by leveraging Twitter’s growing gaming conversation, which was over one billion tweets in the first half of 2020. The first episode alone generated more than 928 thousand views on Twitter.

Best campaign for putting the home in home entertainment: @Samsung_SAUDI

Samsung Saudi Arabia opted to shift the consumer experience into the virtual space, by bringing in experts from the technology industry for a series of live sessions called “Jalsat Tech”. In each episode, the influencers educate consumers on some of the best ways to apply Samsung products’ unique functionalities, while demonstrating tips and tricks in real-time. With six out of ten people on Twitter feeling more connected to others when they see live events streamed on social media, and more people co-viewing live events on the platform, Samsung and its agency Starcom KSA were able to leverage Twitter to drive live stream views. Twitter generated the highest number of live views for Jalsat Tech among the other platforms, with the virtual real-time production resulting in more than 68K  live views during the period of under one hour.

Best campaign for driving positive change: @McDonaldsKSA

With the Human Resources Development Fund as a supporting partner, McDonald’s Saudi Arabia connected with its audiences in the lead up to Saudi National Day to demonstrate its commitment of creating 400 jobs across the kingdom. Working with its digital agency Ethos, McDonald’s produced a video with the hashtag يوم_ماك_الوطني_للتوظيف# (translated as Mac’s National Day for Recruitment), with easy instructions for applicants. All they needed to do was to visit McDonald’s administration office in its eastern province to attend an in-person interview. The brand used Twitter’s video website card functionality to drive people to its location in Khobar.

Best blast from the past campaign: @jawwy

Talk shows were very popular back in the day, so Jawwy - STC's new mobile plan - brought them back by producing a talk show titled برنامج_الحق_حق# (the fairness show). Owning the brand’s well-known tone of voice and what it represents; a fair offering, Jawwy launched a series of episodes on Twitter in May in collaboration with FP7 and UM. People who opted-in to subscribe to the show by liking the tweet received the episodes directly in their notifications with a custom activation. The episodes including the show’s promoted clips generated 1.3M views.

Best campaign that made missing out memorable: @VisitAbuDhabi

In May, the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority created virtual experiences online so people could discover the emirate from the comfort of their own homes. It produced a video to drive people to their Staycurious.ae website. As its slogan stated, “You might not be able to travel but your mind can. You can still explore. You can still be curious!” Under the hashtag #StayCurious, the video showcased how residents can take virtual tours of Abu Dhabi, test their cooking skills, undergo online learning, tune in to virtual events, among other activities.

"The lockdown had a major impact on everybody. Ramadan and Hajj were not the same this year and even day-to-day outings were different. People couldn't visit the city's attractions or exhibitions. While there were many campaigns with strong messaging around this theme, @VisitAbuDhabi kicked it up a notch and went beyond just a film. They created a virtual experience and brought the city to people at home so they wouldn't completely miss out."

Best creative storytelling: @VisitSaudiAR

The Saudi Tourism Authority used Twitter’s new conversation settings to invite other accounts within the kingdom to post about the beautiful destinations of Saudi Arabia. By using these settings, only accounts that it follows could reply to the Tweet, whereas the public could Retweet and like it. Among the accounts that replied included @NEOM - who tweeted a photo of the landscape, @TheRedSeaSA - who tweeted a photo of The Red Sea Project’s beaches, and @DGDA_SA - who tweeted a picture highlighting the ancient heritage of Diriyah Gate. The authority also used Twitter’s conversational ads feature to prompt people to tweet and spread the #LuckySaudis message to their followers. Once people tapped on one of the two buttons in the tweet, a tweet compose box appeared with a pre-populated message. The Promoted Trend Spotlight generated more than 31 million impressions in combination with Twitter’s First View product.

"@VisitSaudiAR used Twitter's new conversation settings which enables brands and people to limit the number of those who are able to reply to a post to just their followers. It was a creative way to use the feature."

Best use of voice Tweets: @FordMiddleEast

Petrolheads love a good engine roar and this is even more true for the Ford Mustang fans. Ford Middle East jumped on the new 'voice tweets' feature to record the engine sound of the Mustang and share it with their fans on the platform. Voice tweets allows brands and individuals to organically add their own flair and personality to their conversations, as they add a more human touch to tweets. Although this feature is currently being tested on iOS, everyone can listen to the tweets while they scroll through the app. This tweet demonstrated Ford’s agility in leveraging a new product update to create a more human experience with its audiences.