The country’s digitization is at the heart of Vision 2030 and stc, Saudi Telecom Company, as the only national and leading operator, has a key role to play in digitizing the nation and helping Saudi adapt to the realities of new technology. With STC’s fundamental value of “customer first”, evolving customer service no longer meant increasing customer service agents, but rather providing more speed, facilitation & information.

STC had developed mystc app, that has everything the store can do and more. However, Despite Covid and the digital acceleration - we noticed that people were still more interested in visiting the physical branches to get their business sorted and done. But should we still be visiting physical branches as our first instinct in 2022? We needed to change that behavior and match the Kingdom’s vision of full digitization.

We turned GoogleMaps into a new educational and entertainment channel. By hijacking the useless store images when you expand location, we hacked them and gave them a function.

With the help of one of Saudi's funniest comedians, Ahmed al Muqrin, we sent him to the most visited stores across the kingdom to create entertaining content from the actual locations and upload them onto GoogleMaps. With every store location search, our character popped up with tips and messages asking people to rethink, and use the app instead. We even transformed StreetView images into interactive instructions to download and use the app.

85% of Saudis are subscribed to stc - historically the customers are used to face to face interaction / human connection, which is why they are so programmed to come to the store.?

Every time they need us, they instinctively open GoogleMaps and find the nearest store. So we thought, if GoogleMaps was leading them to the store, why couldn’t it lead them to the app instead?? And that's exactly what we did. We decided to interrupt them right there and remind them that the mystc app is right at their fingertips to solve any challenges they had.

Ever notice those little thumbnails when you expand a location?? They are pretty useless for a telecom store. Well, until we hacked them and made them very useful, for the first time ever.?

We collaborated with one of Saudi’s funniest comedians, Ahmad Al Muqrin, and sent him to the most visited stores across the kingdom to create content from the actual locations and upload them onto GoogleMaps.?

With every store location search, our character popped up with tips and messages asking people to rethink, and use the app instead?.

By studying what Google allows on its platform, we were able to put branded content (photos, videos, and 360 views) on a platform that doesn't sell space for brands.?

He played it smart, by blending in within the stores’ environment.?

And since Google allows brands to choose their store thumbnails, we obviously chose his content to always appear at the top

We turned simple thumbnails into a totally new media spot that carried one of the biggest targeted, real time, campaigns in the Kingdom.

Just in Q1 (the first Quarter), we achieved the following results:

• Reduction of store footfall 15%.

• Highest number of app downloads in one Quarter (Q1).

• Increase in usage/activity 23%.

• Increase in number of active users 17%.

• Increase in engagement rate on Google Maps content 4.5%.

• Number of new content views 500K+

And we achieved it all without spending a dollar on media!