Situation:

During Ramadan, consumer behaviors shift towards increased product consumption and engagement with brands offering immersive experiences that connect audiences to wider communities.

Almarai Food and Dairy, a leading brand across several categories with 700+ products, has been witnessing declining sales compared to specialized competitors that prioritize marketing. However, TV ads for each of Almarai’s 25+ products would be too expensive and simply add more clutter in an already saturated media space.

Instead, Almarai needed to leverage shifting consumer behaviors and integrate its communication across audiences’ daily Ramadan journeys.

Brief:

Cost-effectively advertise 25+ Almarai products, in relation to key Ramadan moments, in an expensive and cluttered media space.

Objectives:

To increase the following in comparison to Ramadan 2022:

1. Almarai’s overall sales volume by 5%

2. Ad awareness from a score of 88% in 2022

3. Overall product consideration from a score of 89% in 2022

Target audience

We targeted various demographics to establish brand resonance across segments that celebrate Ramadan.

Approach

Everyone celebrating Ramadan experiences the same key moments: fasting, giving back to the community, grocery shopping, and consuming entertainment. We translated these into 3 key pillars that drove our contextual communication.

Entertainment: Capitalize on demand for entertainment and capture popular programs with pre-defined content.

Ramadan Moments: Ensure relevancy across audiences’ daily Ramadan journey by activating dayparting on YouTube and TikTok. Communication was integrated during key moments including meal preparation, Iftar, Suhoor, and grocery shopping.

Social Conversations: Boost consumer engagement by integrating content with trending topics during Ramadan. Monitor and target trending hashtags and associated keywords on YouTube and X to create contextual content. Own the conversation by continuously updating this content throughout the month.

To ensure consistent presence during Ramadan, we crafted three communication pillars: Pre-defined Content, Ramadan Trends, and Daypart Moments.

As platforms like MBC dominate the entertainment scene during Ramadan, with 70% Share of Audience and the most popular programs, we hijacked their shows with pre-defined content. We leveraged Shahid, MBC’s leading OTT service, to feature 10-second contextual adverts tailored to specific episodes and Ramadan moments. So, when viewers tuned into content like “Tash-Ma-Tash: the comeback”, where the characters were reuniting, they saw contextual adverts for our products with headlines like “An inseparable match, just like ghee and honey”.

By implementing dayparting across TikTok and YouTube, we ensured this content was aired during key daily Ramadan moments: grocery shopping, Suhoor, and Iftar.

To further own the conversation, we integrated our communication with trending Ramadan topics by monitoring hashtags and keywords across YouTube and X. This content was contiously updated throughout the month.

Despite lacking sponsorship, Almarai's contextual campaign surpassed expectations, achieving a remarkable reach of over 17 million, with a total of 554 million impressions and 174 million views. The campaign's success can be attributed to a strategic combination of content selection, precise targeting, and continuous optimization, allowing the brand to establish relevance through dynamic communication during key Ramadan moments.

This impactful strategy resulted in significant improvements across key metrics, showcasing the campaign's effectiveness.

Ad awareness witnessed a substantial increase of 6 percentage points, rising from 88% in 2022 to an impressive 94% in 2023.

Consideration also saw a notable uptick of 5 percentage points, advancing from 89% in 2022 to 94% in 2023.

Moreover, the campaign contributed to a substantial boost in volume sales, with a notable 5.8% increase during Ramadan 2023 compared to Ramadan 2022, translating to an impressive 20.2% growth in revenue.