KFC Middle East | Arch Rivals

Insight

There’s no such thing as bad publicity. Or is there?

With a following of over 2.1 million Super Fans, KFC Arabia is the region’s largest quick service restaurant brand on social media. It generates conversations across all platforms, mainly among young Arab men. But what happens when negative chatter pops up around the brand?

KFC was about to launch a new campaign endorsed by famed footballer Cristiano Ronaldo. But just prior to the launch, the KFC brand seemed to be experiencing quite a bit of negative online buzz. Although KFC had full control over the assets it owned, there was little it could do elsewhere.

Initiative needed to find a way to deviate all the negative conversation around KFC and protect its investment behind the upcoming Ronaldo campaign.

After analysing sales and delivery trends, the agency noted a dramatic increase of group and family meals whenever a football game was televised. The upcoming ‘Clasico’ match would be among the most viewed and talked about games of the season. If KFC played its cards right, it was something that it could use to its advantage.

The objectives were to:
- Turn negative online social conversation into positive engagements
- Increase overall brand sentiment
- Increase social media engagement on KFC owned platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube 

By doing so, KFC expected to see an uplift in store footfall and deliveries on game day and continue on once the Ronaldo campaign was in effect.

Strategy

There is nothing quite like a major sports rivalry! Think Borg vs. McEnroe, Prost vs. Senna, Tyson vs. Holyfield. A little healthy competition makes for great fodder for any brand. Add a little controversy, and you’ve scored big time. 

Football is the biggest and most popular sport in the region, and KFC Arabia has associated itself with leading football legends since 2010. Three years ago, when KFC signed on Lionel Messi, it saw loads of buzz erupt in the social sphere, making light-hearted fun of KFC’s partnership with the FC Barcelona player. Fans created jokes, memes and other visual materials that quickly went viral throughout the region. 

Engagement levels on KFC Arabia’s Facebook page also showed an all-time high every time KFC posted about a ‘Clasico’ match – or any football related topic really – from fans mocking the other side or cheering on their respective team.

History proves that rivalry is a great platform for fan interaction. And even though KFC had quite a few legends attached to the brand previously, it decided to approach ‘rivalry’ from a brand new perspective. Leveraging the region’s love for football, KFC wanted to be bold, and fuel conversations that build upon the rivalry of Cristiano Ronaldo fans versus Lionel Messi fans.

KFC’s plan was simple: A little audacity and a whole lot of fan interaction.

KFC knew that KFC Arabia’s partnership with Cristiano Ronaldo would trigger tons of instant reactions from his fans and Messi fans alike. And the brand was ready to make its move.

Execution

Blog Talk: Knowing that home deliveries spike on game days, KFC secretly released KFC buckets with Ronaldo’s image during an FC Barcelona match. This would surely cause a stir, especially among Messi fans. As it turned out, FC Barcelona lost quite badly, and fans were taunted with Ronaldo’s face staring up at them. With the help of bloggers, KFC used this incident to launch a social media frenzy!

Social Media Soiree: Once the campaign was released, it was game on. The action became the perfect opportunity for KFC to join the conversation, leveraging content that would now become even more relevant. Sc

Augmented Reality Happenings: The rivalry continued as KFC released an augmented reality mobile app where fans could take a realistic photo of themselves standing next to Ronaldo in their own surroundings. Ronaldo fans used it to brag, with photos together with him in their living rooms, backyards, or offices. While Messi fans mocked them, posing with Ronaldo next to garbage dumps or toilets.

KFC fuelled the fire by seeding exciting football content to stir the Ronaldo vs. Messi fan rivalry and was front and centre creating brand association with every user generated photo, meme or tweet.

ores of fans posted on social media, commenting on the new endorsement, spreading the news like wildfire with posts, jokes, photos and memes. Ronaldo fans mocked Messi for being replaced by Ronaldo, with depictions of Messi working in a KFC kitchen. And Messi fans retaliated with their own jokes and memes.

Results

Online interactions were through the roof! Social media conversation increased by 137% during the campaign and brand sentiment was up 20%.

The Ronaldo photo initiative generated over 65,000 shares in only 45 days, and countless other shares that KFC are unable to track (e.g., Whatsapp, SMS, email, etc.)

BRAND:

KFC

CATEGORY:

Food

REGION:

Middle East

North America

DATE:

June - December 2013

AGENCY:

Initiative

MEDIA CHANNEL:

Digital,Mobile,Online

The Satire Revolution

Mainstream media is widely censored and controlled by the governments in the Gulf region. As a result, TV programming tends to be regressive and safe. So, for the 28 million Gulf national youths, who represent 65% of the population, it is a struggle to find content that speaks their language and feels relevant to them. The significance of YouTube is revolutionary; it has become a window of free expression, a place where Arab youth are experiencing their own kind of uprising - a cultural revolution driven by satire - fuelling the appetite for locally produced content led by young Arab talent who are using humour to challenge the status quo by making fun of issues considered taboo by the mainstream. Blackberry wanted to tap into this undercurrent and reinvigorate the brand by being part of their revolution so the strategy was to be an enabler of their satire movement and to help create spaces for youth to openly express themselves in a unique way. This campaign features four times on the shortlist for the 2013 M&M Global Awards. Winners will be announced on September 5. BlackBerry partners with Omar Hussein's 'HaroBnaro' YouTube show and gives Arab fans the chance to co-create content via an app.

Saudi Post stunt

Kwality brand new identity

Above are the old dull outdated brand however a lot of markteers are debating about why to launch an ice-cream rebranding in Winter??

its obvious that their return on investment measurement is not placed yet and they have some extra dollars that no need for. Typical case "CEO of arabia".

wherever the reason, its stupid and reflect how non planned brand you are .

As for the positioning, good luck next time in uniting generations Y & Z.

Facebook users in MENA outnumber newspaper copy circulation

A new report from Spot On Public Relations has confirmed that there are more subscribers to social media service Facebook in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) than there are copies of newspapers circulated in the region. The report, ‘Middle East and Africa Facebook Demographics’, shows Facebook has over 15 million users in the region, while the total regional Arabic, English and French newspaper circulation stands at just under 14 million copies.

“Facebook and other social media platforms are now beginning to define how people discover and share information, shape opinion and interact. Facebook doesn’t write the news, but the new figures show that Facebook’s reach now rivals that of the news press,” said Carrington Malin, managing director of Spot On Public Relations. “The growth in Arabic language users has been very strong indeed: some 3.5 million Arabic language users began using Facebook during the past year, since the introduction of Arabic support and we can expect millions more Arabic language users to join the platform.”

Five country markets in MENA now account for some 70% of Facebook users; Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, with a gender bias towards male users that flies in the face of international figures – only 37% of Facebook users in the Middle East are female compared with 56% in the USA and 52% in the UK. Despite the strong growth in the number of Arabic language users, the report also shows that some 50% of MENA Facebook users select English as their primary language, with 25% selecting French and just 23% Arabic.

Egypt’s 3.5 million Facebook subscribers help to make North Africa the largest Facebook community in MENA accounting for 7.7 million out of a total of 15 million MENA users. 98% of MENA’s French language users are from North Africa. The GCC states today account for some 5 million Facebook users.

The two key markets of the Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been quick to embrace Facebook – some 33% of the UAE’s population uses Facebook and it also now stands as the country’s second most visited website after google.ae (according to websites ranked by Alexa.com). Interestingly, some 68% of Facebook users in the Emirates are over 25 years old, flying in the face of perceptions that social media is a ‘generation Y’ phenomenon. However, much of Facebook’s growth across the rest of the region has been driven by the under twenty-fives. Over 48% of Facebook subscribers in Saudi Arabia are under 25 years old, with an equal split between English and Arabic users. However, about three times the number of Arabic users have joined Facebook in Saudi over the past year, compared with the number of English language users. 67% of Saudis on Facebook are male.

“For users, Facebook is becoming a richer and larger component of their daily lives, but for advertisers and communications professionals it’s starting to look like an essential part of the MENA marketing mix. In this region, if you’re going to go where your customers are going, then the answer’s clearly online,” said Alexander McNabb, director, Spot On PR. “However, the key challenge here is the nature of interactions over platforms like Facebook and other social media tools are totally different to traditional media – and it’s important to get these interactions right.”

Facebook has become a force to be reckoned with in the Middle East and North Africa and the platform can now claim 15 million users as of May 2010. Whilst Facebook saw strong early growth in 2008/2009 from English and French speaking users across the region, Facebook’s decision to add an Arabic interface in March 2009 has opened up access to a whole new demographic of Internet users and added 3.5 million Arabic users over the past year. Egypt and Saudi Arabia’s Facebook communities have seen the strongest growth among Arabic users during the past year with each adding 1.1 million Arabic language interface users. We soon expect the number of Arabic language Facebook users in Saudi to surpass the number of English users.

However, with the strong expectation that the weight of numbers will move from English language users to Arabic language users in a number of key MENA Facebook markets, today’s reality is that just 23% of users across the region use Facebook’s Arabic interface. So, those seeking to make the most of the Facebook platform are advised to keep up-to-date with its changing demographics.

Here are some of the key Facebook statistics covered in this report:

— There are now 15 million Facebook users in the Middle East & North Africa (this figure excludes Iran, Israel, Pakistan and Turkey).

— MENA’s top five Facebook country markets, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, account for 70% of all users in the region.

— 50% of MENA Facebook users have selected their primary language for using Facebook as English, with 25% preferring French and just 23% Arabic.

— Only 37% of Facebook users in MENA are female (compared with 56% in the USA and 52% in the UK). Only Bahrain and Lebanon Facebook communities approach gender equality with female users accounting for about 44% of total users.

— The GCC has five million Facebook users, which Saudi Arabia and the UAE representing 45% and 31% of that total respectively.

— North Africa has 7.7 million Facebook users, with Egypt accounting for 3.4 million users (or 44% of all North Africa users). Egypt has the largest Facebook community in MENA.

— Francophone countries Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia together account for 3.7 million French speaking Facebook users, equivalent to nearly 25% of all MENA users.

— Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Tunisia and Yemen all have Facebook communities with more than 50% of users below the age of 25 years old.

— The UAE has the oldest Facebook community in MENA with 41% of users being over 30 years old, 28% being 25-29 years old and 31% being under 25 years old.

You can find Spot On PR on Facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/spotonpr

Survey Downloads

Middle East & North Africa Facebook Demographics (May 2010)

 

Facebook MENA | Demographics

View more documents from Ayman Sarhan.

STC and your facebook friends will give you a free blackberry

http://www.facebook.com/notes/stc-y-shl/bk-ly-lfys-bwk-yrbwnk-blk-byry/403389987280#!/note.php?note_id=403389987280

MOBILY|Prince Abdullah bin Meteb, the grandson of King Abdullah

Al Rahma’s Mercy campaign

Advertising Agency: Full Stop, Saudi Arabia

Creative Director: Kamel Al Zahiry

Art Director and Photographer: Amr Al Masri

Copywriter: Kamel Al Zahiry

Egypt... Where it all begins

 A new campaign for the Egyptian Tourist Authority developed by the Cairo office of JWT aims to establish Egypt as a place where there is more than really big tombs. And accompanying this campaign is a new logo.






The print and TV campaign perhaps does too good a job in touting other things to think about when we consider Egypt, and it starts to look more like a Caribbean island combined with a non-stop party place where you can golf and, by the way, you can catch some pyramids in between all of that. But maybe after all that, Egypt just starts to feel like a generic destination.

SAGIA (Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority)|A Country In Motion

Country In Motion from Federico Costa on Vimeo.


Production  delapostparis.com
Director frankvroegop.com
Producer Pascal Chinarro.
Art Direction & Project Supervision Federico Costa. 
Flame Artist: Michael Bianchi

Funniest Thing Ever

For the non-Arabic readers, that literally says “Microsoft launching “Google Wave” officially next year” :D

Social Media Marketing in Arabia

It seems that Saudi companies are not yet sure about the importance of social media marketing and whether it should play a role in their marketing and branding strategies or not. Internationally, using social media tools (e.g. Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, Youtube channels, etc …) is becoming THE trend among other marketing tools and initiatives.

When the buzz about the potential use of social media in creating an added value to their brands, companies were just waiting to see how things will turn around. Justifying the costs of resources they will dedicate to build such a social media presence was the main concern occupying the minds of these companies’ managements. In other words, managers were thinking; what is the return on such investment?

The global marketing scene has moved from this basic step to discuss the specifics of having a successful presence online. The question of ‘should we have social media accounts?’ has been changed to ‘how to relate and engage with our customers using social media accounts?’. So it is not about the presence anymore, it is about the engagement. According to a study by Wetpaint and Altimeter Group, there is a correlation between a company’s social media engagement and its profit (more on this point is here). That means these social media accounts can be used as a channel of communication with customers. To be successful, this channel has to be dealt with as a long term investment and a major activity for marketing and branding teams. The presence should be alive, active, and emotionally engaging to the customers. Small gestures like saying ‘thank you’ to a Twitter customer, or saying ‘we will make sure to fix that’ on a Facebook page could make a difference with customers and boost their loyalty to the company.

Now, I have been looking around Twitter to check out Saudi companies’ presence over there. And it seems that most of them are in the trap of ‘cold social media presence’. The giant, Saudi Aramco has 351 followers only, can you believe that? Check out now the telecom rivals STC and Mobily, !

======================

Cisco Saudi is the best company in practicing social media marketing in Saudi, they have a blog http://iam.cisco.com.sa and an active twitter account http://twitter.com/ciscosaudi beside a very good Facebook fan page with more than 1000 fans, also they are engaging with other Saudi technology blogs (sponsoring contests in tech-wd.com).

here is an interesting study http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007335

Mobialy DeMarketing

Who is after Mobily ( one of Saudi Arabia mobile and internet service provider)? Is this spoof is user generated or rivalry sponsored?

Either ways, it is poor production to demarket a great brand.

Zain commercial ads - Ramadan 2009

Zain is a leading emerging markets player in the field of telecommunications aiming to become one of the top ten mobile operators in the world by 2011. Today it is the 4th largest mobile network in the world in terms of geographical footprint with commercial presence in 24 countries spread across the Middle East and Africa providing mobile voice and data services to over 64.7 million active customers as of May 2009.
Zain operates in the following countries: Bahrain, Burkina Faso, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, Kenya, Kuwait, Malawi, Madagascar, Niger, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. In Lebanon, the company manages the network on behalf of the government operating as mtc-touch. In Morocco, Zain in a joint venture owns 31% of Wana Telecom. On May 18, 2009, Zain entered into an agreement with Palestinian operator Paltel to attain a 56.5% stake in the company serving 1.5 million mobile customers.
The company offers innovative services in its markets such as One Network, the world's first borderless mobile telecommunication network enabling customers to receive calls and sms without charge and to make them at local rates throughout many countries in Africa and the Middle East.
The Zain brand is wholly owned by Mobile Telecommunications Company KSC, which is listed on the Kuwait Stock Exchange ( Stock ticker: ZAIN ). Zain is listed in the Financial Times' Global 500 Index which ranks the world's largest companies based on market capitalization ( http://www.ft.com/reports/ft5002008 ).For more, please visit www.zain.com

Zain Ramadan Ads revealed a religious tie up with Sheikh Moshari AlAfassi and song of Ramadan, in three languages Arabic, English and French to communicate virtue of the holy month.

Credit:

Client: Zain Group

Agency:

Production agency:

Post production agency:

Media : TV,?

Objective / communication challenge

Insight / communication strategy

Media strategy:

Results:

53% of Saudi men lazy: Study

Friday, 21 August 2009 - 29 Shaban 1430 H

By Abdullah Al-Suqair JEDDAH – Saudi males are lazy, eat too much junk food and spend excessive time in front of the television, all which means they are only likely to get fatter, an Arab health and nutrition expert has said. Dr. Abdullah Musaiqir, head of the Arab Center for Nutrition, has warned of increasing obesity in the Gulf states and particularly Saudi Arabia, and cites a Saudi study showing that over 53 percent of Saudi males live a “lethargic lifestyle”, with only 20 percent described as leading a healthy lifestyle and engaging in activities that help keep them in good physical shape. Twenty seven percent were described by the study as having a “partially active” lifestyle. Parents, Dr. Musaiqir said, are advised to cut down on television watching time for both themselves and their children, and to remove television sets from dining rooms and bedrooms. According to Musaiqir, watching television encourages further unhealthy eating practices as the activity is popularly accompanied by the consumption of snack foods. Musaiqir said the first steps toward promoting a healthier lifestyle should come with awareness programs conducted throughout the Gulf with media involvement, and that school and university curricula should be improved to address issues of nutrition and public health. Schools, Muqaisir said, should make greater efforts to support and encourage sporting activities both inside and outside the confines of their campuses. – Okaz/SG

Sedar::: the worst advert in the history of history. Ever.

This brand is famous with such practice

they do ads for the sake of ads......
no insights
no context...just Lebanese girls with boobs and large ass........