Prince Salman’s Vision for 2030 launched massive changes in Saudi Arabia. Especially for women. They can now drive, ride bikes, go to sporting events and movies. The country, the societal norms, the women themselves, and notably, what they think is possible, is shifting to a more optimistic place. Brands are jumping to target Saudi women at this historic moment.

Glade wanted to do more than just sell air freshener in KSA. We wanted to create a platform that gave Saudi women a voice. But many conservative cultural norms are still in place in Saudi. Ads use men to tell the female story. Women who speak in favor of change run the risk of being ostracized by their community. We created a new fragrance to celebrate the women of Saudi. We wanted to capture the change in the air and empower women in a way that was respectful of social norms.

We wanted to understand more deeply what it was like to be a woman in Saudi during this historic time of change. And we quickly understood that while change was in the air, cultural norms still prevented the women from expressing themselves in public.

We found a relevant platform to help women express themselves. Snapchat. Saudi women are among the highest active daily users due to the platform’s playful yet ephemeral nature.

But the current Snapchat technology doesn’t work if your face is covered by a veil. Glade partnered with Snapchat introduce our new fragrance with a new lens that would let all women play in a way that was respectful of cultural norms. Meet the world’s first selfie-lens experience triggered by the eyes alone, a blink of the eyes was all it took to bring our new lens to life.   

Glade was perceived as a “foreign”, western brand that was not in tune with local culture. So we formed a team of international women to dive deep, learn and understand what it was like to be a woman in Saudi at this historic time. We traveled to Saudi and immersed ourselves in the culture, conducting 1:1 interviews with women in Ryadh and Jeddah. We learned the nuances of how different Saudi women viewed the changes in the region.

Glade launched the Snapchat lens with a call to action for women to “share their wishes for the next generations of girls”. We wanted Saudi women to stretch their aspirations higher than cultural norms had previously allowed. The lens experience visualized notes of our new Glade fragrance but didn’t ask women to buy.

We launched the Snapchat lens on International Women’s Day as a regional lens takeover in Saudi Arabia. All Saudi Arabian women could find the lens in the first position upon opening the app or via snapchat codes featured in many major Arabic and English newspapers and digital publications throughout the region.

The story of our lens was picked up in the US and featured in international digital publications so women around the globe could use the snapchat lens and send their wishes to the women of Saudi Arabia. Even the Snap code was iconic of the region and as it dressed the Snapchat icon as a woman in traditional Saudi dress with her entire face and body covered except for her eyes.

In just 24 hours, our lens garnered 20 million impressions. It was used 2.4 million times and the share rate was more than double for the region – up 64%. Saudi women spent 2x more playtime on our Snap lens than the average user.

The brand launched the lens and its one-of-a-kind fragrance as a show support of the region and to give the women of Saudi Arabia a platform to send their hope to friends and family privately or post it publicly if there were comfortable to do so. The lens increased Glade’s talk value and relevance in the region and sales of the brand grew by 13%.