Social media/smart phone addiction among Egyptian youth is particularly obvious during Ramadan. Dubbed, “the most social” month of the year, Ramadan is the only time of year where families eat together every day, and attend/host social gatherings every night. But, there’s always that one common factor across all households – the detached youth. Instead of joining in on conversation, and spending time with the people around them, they’re stuck to their phones, scrolling through Instagram, tweeting mindlessly and streaming on YouTube. In fact, during Ramadan social media usage sees a +30% spike.

We knew we couldn’t just create another ad, we had to create an act. Knowing that Pepsi won’t be able to get youth off their phones, we turned technology from being the barrier of the ‘lama’ (gathering) to the facilitator. And so we created the first-ever mobile ad you can’t watch alone!

Our execution was digitally-led, and limited to Facebook & YouTube, since these were the two main mediums to view videos on social media. Our main focus was on Facebook, and pushed viewership through carousel ads. Moreover, our only use of TV was with a 10” bumper teasing consumers with a hint that you can’t watch this year’s ad alone. Moreover, we only had the last two weeks of Ramadan to make an impact, adding to the fact that we were focused on creating a one-of-a-kind act that would create buzz & act as a stunt, rather than just another Ramadan ad that fought to resonate among the thousands of pieces of content.

Each video impression didn’t just count as a view, but for a group gathering watching the ad! We took the average video views, and that measured as our benchmark for the average number of times people got in a gathering. This translated into a staggering 270,000 gatherings in just 10 days! Each gathering consisted of 3 to 7 people watching simultaneously. Therefore, 270,000 gatherings equals a max reach of around 1.89 million viewers within ten days!

The overall social media viewership of the campaign reached around 8.2 million views. Additionally, in just 10 days we received 20 million engagements (70% higher compared to the best performing campaign for Pepsi in the past 6 months and +17% higher vs. Ramadan 2016). The impact of the campaign took a huge turn when people started using the “Let’s Get Together” platform to promote togetherness among people of different religions, races and political beliefs.