The country’s digitization is at the heart of Vision 2030 and stc as the only national and leading operator has a key role to play in digitizing the nation and helping Saudi adapt to the realities of new technology. With STC’s fundamental value of “customer first”, evolving customer service no longer meant increasing customer service agents but rather providing more speed, facilitation & information.

STC had developed a suite of self-service applications however, Despite Covid and the digital acceleration - we noticed that people were still more interested in visiting the physical branches to get their business sorted and done. But should we still be visiting physical branches as our first instinct in 2022? We needed to change that behavior and match the Kingdom’s vision of full digitization.

We turned Google Maps into a new educational channel. By hijacking the images when you expand location, we hacked them and gave them a function. With the help of a comedian, Ahmed al Muqrin, we sent him to the most visited stores across the kingdom to create content from the actual locations and upload them onto Google Maps. With every store location search, our character popped up with subliminal messages asking people to rethink, and use the app instead

85% of Saudis are subscribed to stc- historically the customers are used to face to face interaction/ human connection which is why they are so programmed to come to the store.

Every time they need us, they instinctively open Google Maps and find the nearest store. If Google maps was leading them to the store, why couldn’t it lead them to the app instead?

So, we thought, why not interrupt them right there and remind them that the mystc app is right at their fingertips to solve any challenges they had.

Ever notice those little thumbnails when you expand a location?

They are pretty useless for a telecom store…

Well, until we hacked them and made them very useful, for the first time ever.

We collaborated with one of Saudi’s funniest comedians Ahmad Al Muqrin

We sent him to the most visited stores across the kingdom to create content from the actual locations and upload them onto Google Maps.

With every store location search, our character popped up with subliminal messages asking people to rethink, and use the app instead

By studying what Google allows on its platform, we were able to put content on a platform that doesn't sell space for brands.

He played it smart, by blending in within the stores’ environment.

And since Google allows brands to choose their store thumbnails, we obviously chose his content to always appear at the top

We turned simple thumbnails into a totally new media spot that carried one of the biggest targeted, real time, campaign in the Kingdom. In just one week there was:

- increase in number of App download 8%

- Increase in number of active users (last 30 days) 17%

- Increase in number of activities inside the App (buying products, activate/de-active) 21%

And we achieved it all without spending a dollar on media!