The Unexpected Reroute

A new spot uses Google Maps for one of Saudi's biggest targeted campaigns

Office: Saudi Arabia

Client: Saudi Telecom Company

Challenge

As part of Saudi Telecom’s (STC) mission to digitize the Kingdom, the telecoms company wanted to promote their cutting-edge app ‘Mystc’ that offers all the services customers can get in store and more. But customers in Saudi Arabia are conditioned to visit stores for customer service, so the challenge was to break this long-standing habit and convince those who are resistant to change to get help via the new stc app.

Inspiration

Instinctively, when a person decides to visit a Saudi Telecom store, the first thing they do is open Google Maps and find the nearest branch. And when they tap on the place, they would also see a collection of user-generated images of the store that are essentially useless for a telco store.

Idea

In an unprecedented move, stc made clever use of a platform that doesn’t sell space to brands, turning Google Maps into a new educational channel. If Google Maps was leading customers to the store, it was the perfect platform to hijack them to the app instead. We collaborated with one of Saudi’s funniest comedians and sent him to stc stores to create content from these locations and upload it onto Google Maps. With every store search, our character popped up with messages asking people to rethink their visit and use the app instead.

Growth

Instantly, we turned simple thumbnails into a totally new media spot that carried one of the biggest targeted, real-time campaigns in the Kingdom. Within a week, the campaign achieved the following results: