Eyad Zarea leads paid media at Neom, the developing region in northwest Saudi Arabia, where he is responsible for strategic media communications and marketing.
Neom is one of the most ambitious mega-infrastructure projects being built on Earth today.
Located in the northwest region of Saudi Arabia and spanning 26,500 square kilometres — roughly the size of Belgium — Neom will be home to several regions, including The Line. This ‘cognitive linear city’ will use inputs and data collected within its confines to improve the lives of its future residents, set to number nine million people by 2045.
As a result of its scope and scale, Neom has garnered plenty of international attention. However, brand health tracking research revealed that there was some confusion in people’s understanding of what Neom really is.
Kantar research revealed that only 12% of research participants understood what the project is.
That’s why we partnered with Google to deep-dive into search insights about Neom. We discovered that while people were talking about the project, they were mostly asking “what is Neom”.
We turned that insight into the foundation of our campaign. Instead of just giving people the answer to the question, we actively encouraged them to ask it.
Pressing play on a 360-degree video campaign to increase awareness and reach
We decided to use both Search and YouTube to create a stronger, more focused campaign that super-charged the question “what is Neom”.
To kick off, our team worked with Google Creative Works to develop a 360-degree Google and Neom co-branded video campaign specifically designed to motivate people to go and search for “what is Neom”.
Our media agency helped us take the campaign live by launching 15-second teaser video ads that encouraged viewers to search for “what is Neom” on Google Search.
The ads were shown to a mass audience across 16 key markets on YouTube and via programmatic advertising. Programmatic advertising uses AI to automate the sale of ad inventory in real time, encompassing several ad exchanges — including the Google Display Network — to help ads reach the most suitable audiences.
People who interacted with the teaser videos — for example by watching them in full or searching for “what is Neom” after watching them— were automatically shown this longer explainer video:
The explainer video used simple, conversational language to demystify the complexity of the Neom project, which was critical to the campaign’s storytelling element.
To maximise reach for the long-form video, we dropped the teaser videos halfway through the campaign.
Multiple YouTube ad formats also helped us maximise reach and motivate people to search for Neom:
- YouTube Masthead helped us showcase our brand in a native, video-based ad format that appeared in the YouTube Home feed across all devices.
- Bumper ads — six-second or less non-skippable videos — allowed us to reach more people with a short, memorable message and generate high-level awareness.
- TrueView video ads, available as either in-stream or in display, helped us ensure reach and dive deeper into explaining Neom.
- Bite-sized, vertical videos on Shorts allowed us to engage people on-the-go.
To ensure reach for our campaign in key markets, we also served our videos based on custom affinity segments. When our media agency added relevant keywords, URLs, and apps based on people’s interests, habits, and passions to our campaign — even if people didn’t necessarily search for “what is Neom” or “Neom” — we were able to better reach our ideal audiences.
Channelling the power of Search
To bolster the video campaign we also ran a paid Search campaign. This appeared to people who searched for any branded Neom keywords. Examples included The Line, Trojena, Sindalah, and Oxagon — all regions within Neom.
The Search ads teased what Neom was, building on the question “what is Neom” with a clear call to action at the end. People who clicked the ads were directed to the Neom website.
But what about people who searched for “what is Neom?” or “Neom” but didn’t click a Search ad? We employed Custom intent audiences to give searchers the answer to their question the very next time they opened YouTube by showing them an in-stream video ad.
Big ideas, big results
We ran the campaign for one month, making sure we didn’t change any of our other marketing activities or make big announcements during that time. That way we could credit any positive results directly to the Search insights campaign.
Our campaign was a great success. Neom brand searches increased by over 3X year-over-year and by 40% month-over-month. On top of that, understanding of “what is Neom” increased by 4X and positive sentiment rose by 26 percentage points, which is 3X the industry benchmark.
As a result of these impressive numbers, we’ve activated always-on brand and generic Search campaigns. These not only help us ensure consistent brand presence, but also drive people to Neom’s website.
A great (Search) insight can become a campaign in itself
One of the key learnings we took away from this campaign is that Search can be a great tool for brand building. Almost any brand can find out what their customers are asking about them or their industry on Search, and then hone in on answering that in their next campaign.
Maybe that’s highlighting inspirational destinations if you’re a travel brand, or answering new parents’ questions if you’re a children’s retail store. This approach gives brands a direct line to their customers and increased control over their narrative — as opposed to leaving their stories for others to shape and tell.
