In a country that has been receiving an unjust negative wrap in media outlets throughout the world - it was time to change the perception of Saudi Arabia through the world's beautiful sport: football. The campaign was not only developed to change the perception abroad, but it was also reignite hope and patriotism within Saudi Arabia through their football team in the World Cup. By creating Giddam, the notion had changed and the support in and out of the country had seen a sizable increase, making it an amazing PR tool.
The strategy was to get the world to visit Saudi Arabia while not being in Saudi Arabia - and this could only be done through the world experiencing what it's like to be a Saudi football fan. By targeting homegrown Saudi fans from within the country, directing them to Qatar, and helping them create the most incredible atmosphere in the history of the World Cup - the world will take notice and experience the atmosphere with them. Assets ranged from Snapchat filters and targeted ads in Saudi to incredible building projections in Qatar... all leading to the Saudi House which was the catalyst of over 50,000 fans marching to the stadium. The strategy was that once this was covered by news outlets worldwide, the perception was to change to something unimaginable.
To get the campaign rolling and make use of every media outlet we can, we created videos on all social media platforms to help Saudi fans understand what Giddam was about only two weeks before the Cup. The next step was help fans interact using Saudi's most popular apps Snapchat and TikTok with a custom made lens to show their support of the team. We then contacted influencers to voice the campaign, but to our surprise, others jumped on the bandwagon and created their own user-generated content without any ask from us. Once the Saudi fans got hyped, traveled to Qatar, they were met with incredible outdoor campaigns such as projections on Doha's most significant buildings and then were directed to the Saudi House.
Over 750,000 people from every corner of the world visited the fan zone in less than 2 weeks.
25,000 Saudi fans marched from the Saudi House to the first game in Qatar against Argentina... helping Saudi Arabia create arguably the biggest upset in World Cup history by beating the eventual champions 2-1 in a pulsating game.
Online, the campaign received 19 billion media impressions alongside 22 million interactions with 98% postive feedback. It also had 263 million video views and became the #2 trending topic on Twitter.
Perception of Saudi Arabia around the entire globe had changed with the media outlets in the Western world actually rooting for the underdogs and mesmerized by the incredible support they received. The likes they’ve never seen before in any World Cup tournament throughout its long 92 year history.
