Brands typically stick to familiar communication channels: film, OOH, and social posts. However, we chose a different strategy—leveraging Messi's influence, the football icon with the world’s third-largest Instagram profile, practically a platform of his own.

We carefully selected the right cultural context and moment amid significant Saudi transfer speculation to extend an invitation for Messi to visit Saudi. With Messi's PSG contract expiring and him skipping training to accept our invite, redirected global attention to his Instagram posts, offering hard evidence and a first look at his 'unauthorized' trip to millions, triggering online buzz and extensive PR coverage.

Saudi Arabia had been closed to leisure tourism up until 2019. Now a big shift in the country’s tourism strategy, means that Saudi wants to go from closed-off to 100 million visits in 2030. At the same time, one of the country’s other approaches to opening-up the country was investing massively in the Saudi football league.

Major players such as Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar were moving to Saudi clubs, and there was huge speculation on whether Lionel Messi was going to make the move to Saudi, especially as his contract with Paris Saint Germain was coming to an end in the summer.

Accordingly, our approach centered on seizing the excitement and the ongoing news coverage surrounding the monumental shifts in Saudi football and leveraging it to direct global attention towards discovering the offerings of tourism in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia, which was previously not open to leisure tourism before September 2019, set an ambitious goal of reaching 100M visitors by 2030. Our task was not only to reshape the story of the nation, but to also explain where to go, what to do, and make it informative and compelling enough to inspire action.

Our goals were to enhance the perception of Saudi Arabia as a destination, increase its overall attractiveness, and educate potential tourists about the worthwhile destinations and activities the country had to offer. Although Saudi Arabia wasn't yet on many travel bucket lists, it was consistently making headlines in the world of football. Every news outlet was abuzz with discussions about major football transfers to the Saudi league. At that time, the transfer speculation was predominantly centered around the world’s biggest football player – Messi – and the possibility of Saudi becoming his next destination.

We understood the significance of the transfer window in football culture. This time, it wasn't just the usual attention any transfer window would attract. After Ronaldo, Benzema, and Neymar moved to Saudi, Messi's potential move would reshape the Saudi league, creating the most impactful transfer in football history and reuniting the two biggest football icons ever.

Choosing this moment was key and ultimately inspired our idea: The Unauthorized Trip.

We took the bold step of inviting Messi to Saudi on May 1st, a date when he was scheduled for PSG training, and speculation about his potential move to a Saudi club was rampant.

Messi's acceptance of our invitation triggered a weeklong PR frenzy. Our documentation of his trip not only provided evidence for the world’s press to catch him red-handed enjoying Saudi’s tourist allure but also ignited a worldwide conversation across global media and fan communities alike.

With a goal of 100 million visits by 2030, we had a long-term objective of changing the perception of travel in the country on a global scale. We needed the world to start talking about what it’s like to travel to Saudi, so we needed massive reach across the globe.

While we anticipated that the trip would garner substantial PR coverage, aligning with a wider conversation meant we can get the whole world talking. With the impending transfer season, and amidst speculations about Messi potentially moving to Saudi, we strategically extended our invitation to him during this crucial time. Consequently, what was simply a few sponsored posts and regular content evolved into speculation surrounding the possibility of the biggest move in global football transfer history, creating an unmatched PR frenzy across the globe. This strategic timing ensured that all eyes were on our trip.

The campaign primarily centered around photography of Messi’s trip shared through Instagram and press releases to promote his journey. Initially, our focus was on optimizing reach to spread the message far and wide to markets where the reaction was the strongest. However, due to the strategic timing of his visit, most of the material gained traction with global news outlets and sports pages, generating many discussions about Messi's trip in Saudi.

Minor press releases were also shared with a few key media outlets that instantly picked up on the story's significance, as its impact around the world was unmatched.

One audacious media stunt turned a regular visit into FREE non-stop front-page global news. Renowned news channels and top-tier global outlets, including CNN, Sky News, The Guardian, The Independent, The Associated Press, Reuters, Forbes, the Daily Mail, and MSN, extensively covered our 'unauthorized' trip. These are just a few examples of the extensive coverage the campaign managed to secure, not to mention numerous football channels, blogs, and online portals that also discussed the trip.

Leading to:

- 147 Markets Reached

- Visitation increased 36% YOY

- 2.2M Engagement

- 5.7K Total Articles

- 22.3B Total Organic Reach

- +150M Estimated Media Value

- 3.8B Positive Reach

Leading to the ‘Highest Organic Performance in The History of Saudi Tourism – the highest organic Google Searches for Visit Saudi across the world.

Additionally, last but not least, ‘Destination Positivity’ increased 9% YOY

The tourism category, while competitive between nations, tend to become quite stale. Everything from government budgeting, its impact on nation brands or complex decision making processes, make tourism campaigns somewhat boring and expected. Most countries land in the 'Explore the beautiful landscape' space, all within the same realm.

Because Saudi Arabia was a special case within world tourism, we had to use unconventional thinking to make great leaps in a short amount of time. Our approach aimed to starting shaping the perception of Saudi as a tourist destination & turning that into action. We aimed to get the world to talk about leisure travel in the country and to get the world’s eyes to see that travel to Saudi is much more than you have had in mind.