Badya Case Study: New Worlds Through A Unique Creative Campaign

Introduction:

If there’s any time MENA marketers especially want to flex their creative muscles, Ramadan is it.

Every Ramadan is a chance for brands in Egypt and the MENA region to unleash their creativity and present something novel to the field. Sometimes, creativity can mean breaking the norms of advertising formats as we know it.

This Ramadan we have witnessed a unique romantic story that began and grew at Badya by Palm Hills Developments and we couldn’t skip this campaign as it is one of the best we have seen this Ramadan and it brought something new to the Egyptian marketing scene.

The Challenge:

The holy month for the Egyptian marketeers is considered the festival for brands to celebrate creative advertising ideas. Ramadan 2022 was full of campaigns; some of them were highly creative and went extremely viral, but others fell short of what you would expect of their target audience.

Ramadan is the biggest season for advertising campaigns especially for the fierce competitive Real Estate market. Standing out becomes a challenge while keeping the campaign’s performance, and impact.

The Strategy Behind Badya Stories:

While its normal all brands competed on TV broadcasting, Badya decided to stay away from the clutter and own a new platform altogether. Hijacking “Watch it”, the highest viewed content streaming platform in Ramadan, Badya became the only brand that is present on all 14 Ramadan series airing on the platform.

Palm Hills Development designed a clear strategy to adopt digital media as main channel for the campaign. To align with this new digitized media strategy, the creative team behind the campaign expanded its reach into completely new territory in the Egyptian market and decided to come up with a format that is native to the hero platform of the campaign to maximize the business benefits and reach the exact target audience of relevant potential buyers.

The Story of Badya Stories:

Starring Ahmed Malek, Badya campaign for Ramadan 2022 is the first of its kind advertisement short series in Egypt including 13 different stories [#Badya_Stories] between Nada and Hashem, each story presents the unique beginning of a very special moment that can be a life-changing moment.

Badya campaign offered the most romantic theme for Ramadan 2022 Ads and the different beginnings transcended the traditional advertising formats to give the audience the same joy of watching movies.

The Mystery of Episode 01

In the beginning, Badya teased the campaign with a mysterious but alluring announcement featuring actor Ahmed Malek. From then on, each short film presented the story of a new beginning, with each taking place in a new location within Badya that exhibits how beautiful and integrated it is. Additionally, each copy’s title is “Episode One” to represent Hashim and Nada’s “Fresh Start”.

Hashim, played by Ahmed Malek, and Nada, played by an actor of the same name, meet for the first time in the first copy where Badya International University is presented.

In the second copy, Badya Sports Club is presented, which is the biggest club in West Cairo. The third presents Badya’s Business District, which features co-working spaces and offices.

From marketing perspective, it seems like the marketing team at Palm Hills Developments created its very own branded short films where Badya brand is incorporated for subliminal advertising.

It’s worth mentioning that the choice of soundtracks was the cherry on top. It completely embodied the romantic feelings portrayed aptly. You can watch and judge for yourself…

Episode 02 | The beginning

The campaign successfully triggered the audience’s curiosity to decrypt the mystery of Episode 01 and got them wondering what will happen next!

By the end of Ramadan, this was the time to reveal Episode 02 and the time for Badya campaign to make its creative mark on Ramadan 2022 advertising season.

At the end of the campaign, unlike all endings, the final webisode was just “the beginning” to give an emotional yet logical meaning for Nada and Hashim stories that delivered the main key message for the campaign by reflecting the new beginnings in “the city of new worlds”.

The results are AMAZING!

On YouTube, the campaign got more than 25 million views, on Facebook, it has more than 32 million views. The campaign was also on Instagram and TikTok; on Instagram, it has over 21 million views while on TikTok, the campaign has over 58 million views. The exact total number of views is 137,508,405 million views.

Social Media Reactions:

Voice of Customer (VOC) on Social media is the rocket fuel of any marketing campaigns: audience opinion and feedback is the energy that pays off in a major boost to your brand reputation, awareness or sales.

We’ve spotted random tweets for users who that left hungry for more of Badya Stories after releasing the second and final episode…

Tactics & Strategy: Breakdown of Success Factors

Renowned advert director, Ali Ali, brought his superb artistic sense to the campaign. While staying true to the brand, he succeeded in maintaining his distinguishable artistic and cinematic touch throughout the webisodes.

Starring the award-winning Ahmed Malek, who is known for capturing people’s hearts and minds in his romantic roles was another fitting choice for such a romantic campaign.

Brilliant Digital Marketing Tactics

Badya’s campaign is hard evidence that the brand is aware of where communication is headed. It is purely digital, except for its last episode, which aired on TV. The 13 copies exist on digital platforms like Watch It alongside Badya’s social channels, including Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

It’s also worth noting that Watch It only shows 10 seconds of the advert and then directs you to Palm Hills’ YouTube channel to watch the full copy. A simple but brilliant way of increasing relevant traffic to the adverts.

Furthermore, the momentum of Badya’s campaign was bolstered via a variety of sponsored content on different digital platforms and magazines.

All in all, the campaign was divided into 5 phases:

Phase I: Teaser Phase (Announcing Ahmed Malek)

Before the campaign was launched many digital platforms talked about Badya’s teaser phase that announced the collaboration with the actor Ahmed Malek.

Phase II: The Reveal of Badya Stories

After the first episode was released; many platforms also posted about it asking people if they watched it and calling them to do so if they hadn’t. That was Phase II.

Phase III: Tactical Activities

This phase included creating activities on different platforms, for example, the famous digital platform “The Glocal” created a quiz in the form of stories testing people’s knowledge of the advert. They even discussed it in their online show The Stalkers.

Phase IV: The Grand Reveal of Badya’s Amenities

The fourth phase set off with each platform creating special branded content for Badya to exhibit and promote Badya’s amenities. For example, Identity Magazine created a quiz asking the audience about the locations where Badya’s stories took place.

Other platforms like Enigma Magazine, El-Shai, Cairo Scene, El Fasla Online, and Scoop Empire also promoted the different amenities of Badya.

In addition to the above, Scoop Empire interviewed the webisodes’ director, Ali Ali, in their daily podcast to talk about the campaign.

 

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Phase V: The Finale

The fifth phase included episode 2, the beginning of Nada and Hashim.

We can frankly say that this was a top-quality campaign. Among the notable people it engaged was famed Egyptian author, Omar Taher. He even wrote about it on his Facebook page commending the innovation and efficiency of its narrative.

“The campaign has achieved a very high number of views and we’re not just talking about a couple of million views, the total number is more than 100 million views.” – Omar Taher

Case Study Conclusion:

Badya is positioning itself as the city of new worlds; the first fully integrated smart city in New October. Incorporating smart technology and utilizing a complex cognitive system, the city processes its residents’ habits and—as a result—manages to more accurately and efficiently connect its resources to their demands.

Badya’s high-tech gated community has facial recognition, artificial intelligence, and many more smart features to ensure a higher sense of security, it is also one of the first sustainable cities in Egypt.

Fittingly, Badya needed a marvelous campaign to showcase these new worlds.

Subtly, through 13 copies, the campaign smoothly blends Badya’s features with the stories of its humans. After all, cities without stories can never be memorable, no matter how advanced they are. The copies also portray the city very well as the idea of “Fresh Start” shows how Badya offers its residents new beginnings in all of life’s aspects and hence provides us with a glimpse of what life is like at Badya.