Category: Case Studies

Frico Egypt has been accused of plagiarizing the visual for its Mother’s Day greeting, a digital agency have drawn similarities between Frico’s recent Mother’s Day greeting and the work done by the cheese manufacturer Old Amsterdam Egypt.

“We found that Frico Egypt are copy-pasting the same visual in the Mother’s Day greeting post on Facebook page, which we already used five hours earlier” said a digital agency in an e-mail to Digital Boom.

The cheese manufacturer “Frico” published a branded Mother’s Day greeting post on Facebook 4:00 PM CLT, March 21, which Old Amsterdam Egypt claims that the same visual was published five hours earlier.

Frico Egypt VS Old Amsterdam Egypt

Meanwhile, we’ve researched the creative piece and discovered that it’s a paid photography on Shutter-stock – however, that doesn’t spoil the plagiarism claims, because it’s simply the same industry players using the same creative piece on the same occasion, a coincidence?

Frico has yet to respond to this claim.

Every year the Oscars ceremony provides us with interesting material to talk about and share over social media platforms, in 2015 it was the famous Ellen DeGeneres’ selfie that smashed all Twitter records.

This year it appeared that Leonardo Di Caprio finally winning in the Oscars was going to be the topic of choice until an Egyptian journalist popped the infamous question “What about your first Oscar for you!?”

https://www.facebook.com/aDigitalBoom/videos/vb.470848579657576/972008016208294/?type=2&theater

Suddenly everybody was talking about this, both locally and internationally, even Google would autocomplete the question once you typed “What…” and of course brands were fast to jump in on the topic and try to creatively make use of something every one is talking about.

Here is a roundup of some brands who joined the trend over social media, tell us what you think of them? Do you agree with this type of trend-jacking or not? and do you know of any other brands that joined the trend?:

‘Whataboutz’ some news-jacking examples?

Jumia Egypt Mince The Automobilers Mori Sushi Big Cola Birell Sawa4

When news of Arsenal’s interest in midfielder Mohamed Elneny leaked last December, thousands of enthusiastic Egyptians flooded the club’s social media space, generating more than 280k tweets and millions of Facebook impressions in three weeks.

Digital Boom analyzed the untapped potential of the club’s presence on the Egyptian social media sphere, providing three compelling reasons for Arsenal to hire a digital media agency in Egypt.First, let’s look at some facts.

165K tweeps generated 220k+ tweets upon Arsenal’s official announcement on Jan. 14

Arsenal’s official announcement

It’s official! @ElNennyM has joined @Arsenal https://t.co/EXB8o9Fbu6 #ElnenySigns pic.twitter.com/DWHoBL7DtB

— Arsenal (@Arsenal) January 14, 2016

How the world reacted over Elneny’s transfer to Arsenal

Heat map shows how the world reacted over Elneny’s transfer to Arsenal.

Egyptians flood Arsenal’s Facebook page

• Over 100K new fans from Egypt in 72 hours
• Massive interactions on Elneny related posts
• Fans expressed big support for Elneny and warned against excluding him from matches
• Non-Arabic speaking Arsenal fans urged Egyptians to make their Facebook comments in English so that they could understand

Here’s a glimpse of what happened on Arsenal’s Facebook page:

Do you think it’s negative? Ok, let’s continue reading…

Arsenal opportunities in Egypt

1- Grow digitally

With a population of 90M, Egypt is considered one of the biggest countries in the Middle East and Africa region. There’re more than 40M Egyptian netizens, 27M on Facebook alone, 1.5M on Instagram and 1.4M on Twitter.

It only takes a few months to win Egyptians’ hearts

Arsenal’s Facebook page hit 100K new likes in less than 72 hours of announcing ElNeny’s GBP 7.4M 4-year contract, signaling a huge opportunity to grow Arsenal’s fanbase in the Middle East and win over La Liga and Premier League clubs.

Arsenal has only 1.9M Egyptian fans on Facebook, and the number is expected to skyrocket after Elneny’s transfer

2- Commercial opportunities

Mobile content monetization

Egypt has around 60M active mobile users, and only 40M of which are connected to the internet. Half of them use smartphones and the rest prefer featured phones.

With 40M phone users relying on featured devices, Arsenal has an opportunity to harness the revenue potential of SMS subscription content services which is financially rewarding (Check Chelsea’s case study).

Increase sales in the MENA region 

Again, it’s a great opportunity to start distributing the club’s products to increase sales from the Middle East

3- Regional sponsorship opportunities 

Brands tend to partner with sports clubs who already have regional existence in the region.

So will Arsenal grab the opportunity and hire an Egyptian digital media agency?

For all of you other Arab nationals (especially us Lebanese), please do forgive the question. But having sat through another round of judging at this year’s Effie MENA Awards, I’ve again come away impressed by the ability that Egyptian creatives have to not just produce the goods when it comes to engaging campaigns, but also campaigns that produce effective results (after all, the whole point of marketing is to support the business).
Here’s the 2013 Grand Prix winner, from JWT and Vodafone. To quote from JWT directly, when Vodafone Egypt wanted to launch a brand new concept in the market – micro re-charge cards – the client-agency team spotted an opportunity, elegantly positioning the micro re-charge cards as small change. This platform for a business opportunity has never been done before anywhere in Egypt.
In order to make Vodafone’s brand positioning come alive, JWT Cairo dug deep into the “lack of small change” insight, creating a launch campaign that added surprisingly great value to seemingly valueless change. The beauty of the business solution also lay in how easily the micro re-charge cards, designed by JWT Cairo, perfectly fit into the cash register’s cash tray. Now when a small retailer needs to hand back change to his customer instead of providing a useless item, he can provide a valuable asset, the Vodafone “Fakka” micro re-charge card.
And, as a picture can convey a thousand words, here’s the campaign video.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqOsYNilElY&w=420&h=315]
As if one Grand Prix award, the defining honor of any creative competition, wasn’t impressive enough, Egypt won a second Grand Prix this year for the launch of the energy drink Sting. The team behind the launch, which included agencies BBDO and OMD, not only grew the brand’s market share, they actually grew the size of the market for energy drinks in Egypt. There’s such a strong streak of Egyptian humor running through this that you have to watch it in full.
[youtube
Two Grand Prix awards in three years at the Effies? Who needs wings when you have Egyptian marketing savvy?

How many often talk the social media talk on behalf of their brands/companies versus who actually walk the social media walk to improve the brand awareness, loyalty and sales?
Gloria Ceramic’s exceptional decision to produce 2016 collection before its time just because of a comment on Facebook, gives us a glimpse on how social media can empower brands with minimum marketing efforts.
It all started when a customer “Yassmin Sakr” left a comment on Facebook saying that “she went to Gloria Ceramic showroom to choose designs for her new house, however some of the chosen designs are from the new 2016 collection and will be released early next year, but she only has 2 weeks before she gets married.

First respond

The company responded traditionally stating that the new collection will be released between Jan and Feb 2016 with a decent apology. That’s ok! No problem

“Because social media is beyond traditional customer service”

Second respond 

In what appears to be an internal follow-up to the customer feedback. After 22 hours from the first reply, the company published the second reply asking Yassmin “the customer” to send her mobile number in a private message.

How costly this decision?

Next day, Gloria Ceramic replied to the thread confirming that they will exceptionally produce the chosen designs from the 2016 collection, alongside with a letter from the CEO wishing her a happy marriage. How cool is that?

The positive dialog continues

Takeaways: 

• Traditional customer service is ok, but don’t expect exceptional results (you’re there to just be there, nothing important)
• Executive management members have to listen well to social media daily status report in order to make the right decisions if needed
• Empower your social media team to take the lead and decide for your brand (requires an excellent sync)
• Good brand reputation brings sales

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