NEOM was announced in 2017 and widely reported on as a “Smart City”. With many cities, regions and sectors planned in NEOM, this is only part of the picture.

Announcements of The LINE, Oxagon, Trojena and Sindalah, added to the confusion with many construing NEOM and The LINE as the same thing.

In 2021 NEOM launched “Made to Change” which raised awareness by 20 NPS points, but research in 2022 showed understanding was becoming a bigger challenge with so many awe-inspiring and ambitious chapters being added to the NEOM story.

All these announcements and launches created a new objective for the Masterbrand; A growing need for our B2B and B2C target audiences to clearly understand what NEOM is and that it is a credible opportunity.

We need to bring clarity to NEOM as it grows in ambition and scale.

What is NEOM fuels the myths, misperception, and confusion about NEOM to spark intrigue and encourage our audience to search for credible answers. Paid media and SEO lead them to content with facts delivered by reputable third parties and NEOM itself.

Brand tracking showed awareness was performing effectively, but deeper understanding was lagging. Third-party content proliferated, feeding a disjointed, sceptical brand narrative.

There was a global conversation about NEOM, but it was misinformed and we weren’t part of it.

We needed to build a dialogue with our audiences comprising of B2B, B2C, Global and Local segments, to build comprehension of what NEOM is and belief in its credibility.

Our strategy is informed by behavioural science that shows it’s more effective to change people’s actions than change their perception. Simply telling people the answer and trying to convince them of our credibility wouldn’t work. We had to get them to find the facts for themselves.

Algorithms reward negativity and drown out credible information. We also needed to bring the truth to the front page. And today’s front page is the Google results page.

Our call to action became: search “What is NEOM”

What is NEOM launched on the 20th of February and is ongoing. It was conceived as a long-term/ always on programme.

The campaign is live across NEOM owned platforms, social channels, YouTube and Google. Our keyword, paid media and SEO strategy highlights credible 3rd-party content from publishers and platforms our audience trust, supplemented by bespoke 1st party content like explainers in order to give our audience the facts and a simple answer to the question they’ve all been asking.

Our target audience comprises B2B, B2C, Global and Local segments leading to more than 240 pieces of content in English, Arabic, German, French, Japanese, South Korean and Portuguese (BR)

Searches of “What is NEOM” were 27x higher after the campaign launch.

Those exposed to the campaign are 4x more likely to know what NEOM is.

Positive sentiment towards NEOM increased by 26 points, more than 3x NEOM’s benchmark.

In short, People searched “What is NEOM”, learned what it is, and think it’s more credible than ever before.