Roaming has become a basic need…and, as with any necessity, Price and Convenience are key. This has placed STC, like most telecom providers across the world, in a very tight spot, since most travelers prefer to use a local SIM in the country they are visiting. The idea of a roaming puppet – with a tablet constantly connected to the internet through an STC roaming SIM, allowing seamless communication the friend who missed out on his holiday with a group of young friends (our target audience) – positioned STC as a provider of “worry free” roaming, thanks to its diverse and flexible roaming plans/solutions.

We created an entertaining online show - ‘Rayi7 Rayi7’ – with a cast of well-known YouTube celebrities, each episode indirectly communicating a key RTB of the STC Roaming service.

The campaign began with a teaser for the episode, driving attention to STC’s destination entertainment site. Simultaneously, a targeted online campaign drove additional traffic and created hype around the episode. YouTube pre-rolls supported with online and social media ads, driving traffic to the episode’s on-site page. TV, print & outdoor were used to help build awareness and equity, featuring clips from the show and highlighting its key messages.

An activation at STC Showrooms saw the Puppet standing in as a customer service agent, with the real agent operating remotely via the Puppet’s “iPad face” – leaving customers surprised and amused!

The popularity of the show led to our Puppet becoming the ‘talk of the town’ and the face of STC Roaming.

Results far exceeded the original targets:

• Viewership reached 10 million – 166% over target, making STC number one in branded YouTube shows (Source: Campaign Analytics & YouTube).

• Several episodes surpassed 50% organic views, 40% view-through rates and 70% average view duration. Recurrent viewing grew, with over 60% of viewers having watched a previous episode. 50x increase in YouTube and Google searches, episode titles leading top-of-mind telco searches. Daily organic visitor activity on the channel tripled, year-on-year (Source: Google Analytics).

• New channel subscription up 5% (original KPI was 2%). (Source: Campaign Analytics).

• Roaming product subscriptions achieved a 14% increase, original KPI: 5% increase (Source: STC Sales Data).

• The campaign was recognized as a “best practice benchmark” (Google Middle East)

• The total earned publicity value for the campaign is $320,000.