One day I was in the car waiting at the traffic lights, thinking about how life changed since the pandemic. Then I saw the most beautiful campaign done by the Ministry Of Health, and made me realize how creativity could be in its simplest form!

Your eyes are enough to communicate and engage with anyone! That was the main idea behind MOH campaign. Since the pandemic, people’s lives have dramatically changed in Saudi Arabia. Especially in relationships, coronavirus has shaped the way of communication and affected it negatively. Due to that, socialization has been reduced. Further, since human beings are social species, Covid-19 safety precautions seem challenging to follow. 

Wearing face masks on a daily basis is odd in KSA, so society was struggling to wear them. As a result, people were experiencing a new obstacle called mask fatigue. At this moment, MOH had the urge to address this obstacle in order to protect the kingdom’s citizens and residents! 

In October 2020, almost 20% of Saudi Arabia had stopped wearing masks. Hence, with mask usage rates lowering the ministry had to keep people aware of mask importance by launching an integrated 360 campaign across the Kingdom. The main goal of the campaign is to protect people by reminding them to keep wearing masks.

Through this campaign, MOH delivered its message most simply by telling individuals that eyes are enough to interact with whoever around you.

Even with your mask on, you can communicate by only using your eye expressions. So your eyes will talk, your eyes will surface!

Choosing the right message along with appropriate appeal is a winning ticket for every marketing strategy. In MOH case, they evoked people’s emotions and motivated behavior change by using emotional marketing. As shown in the campaign’s key visuals, they have targeted all Saudi’s population and created an appropriate message to them. Through these visuals, the ministry has converted its message into action by shooting different eye expressions from all ages to approve that your eyes can talk too.  

The campaign went viral and had a substantial interaction through social media, Where they have achieved 10 million online impressions! More importantly, in December 2020. The mask usage rate has increased by 85%, which shows the effectiveness of this marketing tactic that created the right impact on the targeted audience.

Shining a light on one of the targeted audience, who had moved by the creativeness of this campaign, it’s me! I was amazed to the point that I said I want to be one of that brilliant marketing team and be part of the MOH’s impact on society.

Two months later & here I am, working at a cafe, writing a blog about one of my favorite campaigns after a long day at the ministry of health, achieving my goal of boosting my marketing career with #YourEyesAreEnough campaign team.

Yes, this is how powerful creative marketing could be!

 

We are living in an era of digital technology. The fact that our world surrounded with social media tells it became an essential part of our lives. In recent time, business success depends on the digitals more than anything as it no longer optional for any company’s marketing strategy. Two weeks before I attend a remarkable discussion from a recently graduated woman on how digital marketing is important for business presence called Nadiya Khalid.

One year ago, Nadiya was in the same place as I am, she had her Intra with Virgin mobile KSA and kept working with them till now. She is a marketing officer that works mostly on digitals and communications. Her speech was mainly focusing on Virgin brand path in Saudi Arabia through the digital age.

Virgin brand is a success story for diversification, they are so thick that each industry and group has its own companies. Virgin mobile KSA is under the Middle East and Africa group, their presence affected by a fun, relax, and flexible environment. Their ambition is to be the most irresistible brand by communicating the brand values. Virgin brand was existed to change business for the good.

 

Social media & Marketing

We can define social media as the online meaning of communications (Tuten, T.L. and Solomon, M.R., 2017). Likewise, (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010; Kietzmann et al, 2011; King et al, 2013; Bagley et al, 2014; Power, A. 2014,) have estimated that “social media employs mobile and web-based technologies to create highly interactive platforms to enable people to communicate, share, collaborate, and modify user-generated content, thereby providing a platform for real time virtual interactions”. Additionally, social media has its own share of a hit in the market, as it has transformed socializations technique into more digital way through this era. Where Marketing is a process of communicating and delivering a service or a product that have a value for consumers (American marketing association 2013). Through this time to achieve the marketing purpose, using social media marketing is an integral technique to spread the word out of the business in a new way. According to some marketing professionals who stated social media as “a game-changing technology with a major impact on business” (Corstjens, M. & Umblijs, A. 2012,). Social media is a powerful way for any organization to build the business. As it is the fastest way to reach out to your consumers and make an effect on them. Moreover, social media marketing is the utilization of social media technologies and channels to communicate and create a value for an organization’s stakeholders (Tuten, T.L. and Solomon, M.R., 2017).

This statistic shows the number of social network users worldwide from 2010 till 2018 with predictions of the years after.

 

Figure.1

Proofs the importance of using social media marketing due to the enormous numbers that are using and will use in the future.

Channels

Figure.2

As shown in figure.2 it is explaining the most popular channels around the world, the highest channel used is Facebook, where the lowest one is Telegram. In addition, organizations’ marketing in the social media concentrates some of these channels to their brand presence. In Saudi Arabia “The growth of diffusion of social media platforms has been observed at a larger scale” (Orloff, 2012). Moreover, “Several small as well as large companies and new ventures in Saudi Arabia have established their businesses and organizational profiles on social media websites” (Sheikh, Z., Islam, T., Rana, S., Hameed, Z. & Saeed, U. 2017,). Virgin brand KSA for instance target youth between the ages 18-35, male and female via these channels: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube for advertising purposes.

To conduct a social media audit for your brand you have to study well what you will present for them through your channels. On top of that, being innovative and creative with the way you post about products or services by picking the right captions & designs, that will impact positively on your stakeholders. Virgin mobile KSA posts depend on two types which they are organic and paid posts. Organic type is using free tools provided by the social networks to share posts, respond to customers, and interact with your social community. On the other hand, Paid type is displaying adverts (text, image, video, carousel etc.) or sponsored messages to a specific group of social network users based on user profile (Social Media Marketing Planning Guide, 2018). Boosting these types is essential for a beneficial time on advertising.

 

Challenges

The creation of value for a target market of customers is the central role of marketing in an organization (Kotler & Keller, 2016; Cowley, S.W. 2017,). Consequently, going through some difficulties is common. Nadiya has faced some challenges within Virgin mobile such as: 1-competition in Saudi market, that is really high. 2-Changing people perception of the brand is very problematic especially here as we did not get used to the idea of a brand that has many industries and groups under it. 3-Products must get approved by CITC and finally, promotions are too expensive where advertising tools such as Twitter & Snapchat increasingly increasing prices. The cost of social media is a big challenge due to its importance this time. Even though sometimes you work very well and have the budget for posting your words, you may get disappointed with the statistics after publishing your posts.

 

Social Media never sleeps

This discussion opened my eyes on how “the environment of social media is like a volcano that suddenly erupts without warning.”( Tuten, T.L. and Solomon, M.R., 2017). We cannot predict the time of having a new trend through channels to follow up with. However, I realized that the internet had become the foundation of life. Since it’s the significant part of engagement and communication that reach all who you want at the same time.

Agreeing with (Brem, A., Maier, M., and Wim Schneider, C., 2016.) “An invention becomes an innovation when it is successfully commercialized”. Social media has helped businesses to increase the brand presence and awareness through engaging with costumers via its social world. Another point is, nowadays market cannot be without social media marketing as it an integral strategy throughout any industry, and that is the meaning role of social media and marketing from the perspective of a future marketeer.

In conclusion, with the concept of trying to jump even if you were afraid, the Virgin brand had transformed from a startup to a global diversification group, giving a perfect example of a successful business presence. And that will be the end of Nadiya’s great story with Virgin.

 

 

References:

• Corstjens, M. & Umblijs, A. 2012, “The Power of Evil: The Damage of Negative Social Media Strongly Outweigh Positive Contributions”, Journal of Advertising Research, vol. 52, no. 4, pp. 433-449. [online] available at: http://web.a.ebscohost.com.dcu.idm.oclc.org/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=1&sid=b58a762d-c03c-4509-88f7-97acb339631e%40sdc-v-sessmgr03 (accessed 28 November)
• Cowley, S.W. 2017, “The BuzzFeed Marketing Challenge: An Integrative Social Media Experience”, Marketing Education Review,  27, no. 2, pp. 109-114. [Online] Available at: http://web.b.ebscohost.com.dcu.idm.oclc.org/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=1&sid=7637ecd3-e0e7-423f-b6d1-bef3dfda7d16%40sessionmgr103 (Accessed 29 November 2018).
• Dahl, S., 2018. Social media marketing: Theories and applications. Sage. [Online] Available at: https://books.google.com.sa/books?hl=en&lr=&id=iPlNDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=social+media+marketing&ots=plx4PSocy9&sig=ptqm6l8gWjIixJDPbFOti9ifWQ0&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=corestgens%20and&f=false (Accessed 27 November)
• Facts, S. (2018). Topic: Social Media Statistics. [online] Available at: https://www.statista.com/topics/1164/social-networks/ [Accessed 29 Nov. 2018].
• Orloff, A.D.K.B., 2012. E-Commerce in Saudi Arabia: driving the evolution, adaption and growth of e-commerce in the retail industry. [Online] Available at: https://sachaorloff.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/e_commerce-in-saudi-arabia_driving_the_evolution_adaptation_and_growth_of_ecommerce_in_the_retail_industry_socg_2012june1.pdf (Accessed 29 November).
• Power, A. 2014, “What is social media?”, British Journal of Midwifery, vol. 22, no. 12, pp. 896-897.[Online] available at: http://web.b.ebscohost.com.dcu.idm.oclc.org/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=1&sid=5266632c-75d5-402a-8441-b06d0b309906%40sessionmgr104 (Accessed 28 November)
• Sheikh, Z., Islam, T., Rana, S., Hameed, Z. & Saeed, U. 2017, “Acceptance of social commerce framework in Saudi Arabia”, Telematics and Informatics,  34, no. 8, pp. 1693-1708. [Online] Available at : https://ac-els-cdn-com.dcu.idm.oclc.org/S0736585317300898/1-s2.0-S0736585317300898-main.pdf?_tid=3836d5fe-5f27-4641-aae8-8ee2252e0680&acdnat=1543375811_6a7cf1fc028d2eb441cb5c08769f6d73(Accessed 28 November).
• Social Media Marketing Planning Guide. (2018). [Online] Available at: https://get.simplymeasured.com/rs/135-YGJ288/images/2018SocialMediaPlanningGuide-V2-WORKSHEETS.pdf (Accessed 29 November 2018).
• Tuten, T.L. and Solomon, M.R., 2017. Social media marketing. Sage. [Online] Available at: https://books.google.com.sa/books?hl=en&lr=&id=XQg_DwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT15&dq=social+media+marketing&ots=tPc_AP_llM&sig=TIEcg0NSYedzYp-C2ZGUMaQwouE&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=social%20media%20marketing&f=false (Accessed 28 November)

 

 

Over the past decades human life has going through many technological changes that made a big development in the world. Which in two words we call it the industrial revolution. First time I found out that this terminology was on 25 October with Reef Alawad, Jack Molony and Anthony Gavin. Then my journey to learn a new concept in life has begun.

Starting with Reef, she is a Saudi woman whose working in Accenture company for seven years. Within this experience she supported different governments across the region, to help them implementing technology in their sectors for an economic outcome. Her speech was concerning about the latest phase of industrial revolution which focuses on technology, then about digital age and three biggest agendas of specific digital trends she has seen in government. Moving to the Irish business networkers Anthony & jack, in 2015 they have settled a voluntary group to introduce business networking for companies and business professionals between Saudi Arabia and Ireland. The reason behind it is to bring people togather to share experiences, learn and come up with business opportunity for each other. Anthony is a monetary agency at SAMA and the chairman of this group in Saudi, where jack is technology consultant at payment services company.  Jack presentation was about explaining the most important events that happened about economic impact of the fourth industrial revolution. He is mainly focusing on the marketing & financial implications of the fourth industrial revolution.

 

Industrial revolution waves

 According to (Mokyr, 2003, p50) “The term industrial revolution is normally reserved for a set of events that took place in Britain roughly from 1760 to 1830”. That is how it is started; industrial revolution is the process of economic expansion from using hand production to machines. In a quote by T.S. Ashton he described the industrial revolution as “a wave of gadgets that swept Britain”. Moreover, for the long term these historical events are a result of variety of technological and social changes had affected all western Europe economy so it did not limited to England (Mokyr, 2003). Thus, human history in technology was running through a lot of digital waves, that had affected our lives in a massy way. Before the industrial revolution everything was by hand, nowadays we have exchanged a lot of human activities with technology until we became not able to dispense it. Referring to reef and Jack, the waves had move along from Mechanization where this wave has helped people in their job roles and it was all about production, electrification where electricity had a huge impact on work productivity, informatization where computers used in the industry tell intellectualization the era of digital age such as technology like artificial intelligence, blockchain and robotics & machine learning.

 

Welcome to the 4.0 industry

We are at the beginning of a new era where we live in a point of emerging technology and the real physical world together as reef had stated, which it is titled as 4.0 industry. It is the “methodology to generate a transformation from machine dominant manufacturing to digital manufacturing.”(Oztemel, E. and Gursev, S., 2018.).Therefore, we can expect that technology will be the foundation of societies in the future. Jack had discussed what made this industrial revolution, in the first place it impacted with a numerous of technology that will change our lives. For instance, Artificial intelligence and robotics & machine learning.

 

 

Artificial intelligence & Robotics

The fourth wave just started with artificial intelligence, big data and robots as reported by (Park, S.C., 2017). Therefore, it is agreeing with what jack said about artificial intelligence, that it is the most important significant technology in 4.0 industry. As it has a huge impact on the economy for example, paypal has developed computers security protection by developing it from AI as it helped to react to harmful actions immediately. Also, John Deer has built AI on their equipment that led to no longer need of human beings. So, this phenomenon made the connect between machines and machines possible.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Which will move us to robots, in line with Sang and Chul Park AI, big data and robotics can contribute with automation to increase productivity, subsequently, robots can use AI to make decisions on a complicate process by themselves. Consequently, jack’s point of view was right, that robotics and automation today can take human labor place. As shown in the figures unemployment in the past years has been increasing, “the mpirical evidence shows that unemployment fluctuated but its average rate remained about the same for a century and a half (see Figure 1). However, at the same time, the hours worked, annually, decreased substantially in OECD countries (see Figure 2)” (Vermeulen, B., Kesselhut, J., Pyka, A. and Saviotti, P.P.) which may lead to a covert technological unemployment that could illustrate us the negative side of these technologies.

 

 

Agenda of digital trends 

Reef had explained the most important digital trend in government which is focusing on citizen experience. “Digital technologies have become a kind of a channel for the exchange of new types of professional knowledge and introduction of innovative developments directly into the work of the government” (Kosorukov, A.A., 2017). Currently internet is an essential thing for citizens everyday life especially in the Arab world as shown in figure 3. Therefore, building a strong positive experience through their journey with government is important. With 2030 vision the government direction had completely changed in an efficient way, so citizen experience will be in a good hand with technology. Moreover, satisfying citizen will increase productivity for an economic outcome value eventually.

 

All in all, industrial revolution had shaped our world with digital transformation in an incredible way. Even though it has some disadvantages, in the end it helped us to live in a growth economy. In the era technology is more than the basic use of mobile devices, everything from countries to individuals are connected to the digital age.

 

No one could imagine that making fun could open a door of successes but actually that what Funko company is doing. Mike Becker have started a small toy business in Washington. Once he spies out on pop culture with one of his friends. It all started at Universal studios after Mike finds that Eureka moment in front of Sparky’s store, the fun has begun.

Funko were a bubblehead company then in 2005 has exploded after Mike sell it to a friend called Brian Mariotti. They had various toy license deals with companies, now they distribute world widely! Funko now is a very successful company with very innovative products. From a bobblehead garage to an innovative leader of pop culture world. That’s how Funko Inc brings us fun.

 

 

Funko & Entrepreneurship

First of all the origin entrepreneurship word is French ”entreprendre”  in the 13’s century which was defined as to do something or to undertake. Entrepreneurship idea has established in the 1700s, the concept of the entrepreneurship is so deep as it has many definitions and descriptions through the past decades, even though it has passed and developed through a lot of meanings all of the concepts have agreed that entrepreneurship is an essential part of our business lives.

 According to (Coulter, 2001) “entrepreneurship is the process whereby an individual or a group of individuals use organized efforts and means to pursue opportunities to create value and grow by fulfilling wants and needs through innovation and uniqueness, no matter what resources are currently controlled”

Simply it’s starting a new business journey by organizing with the ability of taking risks and challenges with no fear of failing, therefor it’s the way of taking an advantage of an opportunity by satisfying your consumers with no matter what efforts you are making.  Another important definition of entrepreneurship by Rindaova defined acts of entrepreneurship as “Efforts to bring about new economic, social, institutional, and cultural environments through the actions of an individual or group of individuals” And that’s  done by the person who manages and controls a business with assuming challenges and hoping of profit, which will lead us fitting to Low and MacMillan definition of entrepreneurship as “the creation of new enterprise”. Entrepreneurship has more recently been defined as the creating of new economic activities (Davidsson et al., 2006). And that’s what Mike Becker has done. A change in the economy has been identified recently, moving from knowledge-based activities to creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship, and imagination (van den Broecket al. 2008; Oke et al. 2009). 

 

Creativity & entrepreneurship

Creativity has been viewed as the construction of ideas or products which are new and potentially useful (Amabile 1988), Creativity is that skill where you have the ability of coming up with novel and new ideas and having a bright look at your enterprise problems or opportunities. Therefor Creativity enables the entrepreneur to act on these opportunities in ways which can result in competitive advantages for the organization. It can provide the basis for innovation and business growth, as well as impacting positively on society generally (Bilton 2007).

 

Innovation & entrepreneurship

The relevance of understanding the role of entrepreneurs given the contribution made in terms of both creating employment and advancing with innovation (Thurik and Wennekers, 2004; Welter and Lasch, 2008; Wennekers and Thurik, 1999). According to Drucker (1985), innovation is a specific instrument to entrepreneurs. Furthermore, innovation is a powerful tool to any entrepreneur it’s the technique of presenting your enterprise in a different but better way, thus innovation is a critical factor to companies seeking to obtain a dominant position and as well as boosting their profits (Hu and Hsu, 2008; Kaminski et al, 2008).

 

 

Brian Mariotti As an Entrepreneur

In my opinion Brian is the perfect example of a successful entrepreneur, cause Funko could never ever gone to where it is today without him. Brian built a foundation with vision in the right time and took it to places that no one could imagine. Brian Mariotti received the EY Entrepreneur of The Year 2016 Award in the Consumer Goods and Services category in the Pacific Northwest. Which shows that he is a real entrepreneur, as he is not afraid of trying and making mistakes. He has the knowledge and resources that helped Funko to have a competitive advantage and expand over the past 10 years.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton