Now that the world cup has reached the final stages, we finally can say that sports in our region are developing fast, and the results achieved by the Saudi and Moroccan teams are beyond expectations. We can also easily say that we have teams that can, in the short term, be able to compete and win against International teams, while on another note, the organisation at the stadiums and in the fan zones have alone set new standards and hats off to Qatar for setting up such synchronised activities.
The challenge was not only in the stadiums but also the engagement of advertisers and sponsors around such an event and embracing it and more importantly leveraging an integrated media approach that linked linear TV with digital and being able to better understand the audience to retarget them in the future.
We started pitching for sponsors and advertisers in the previous October and although everybody told us clients will wake up at the last minute, we have achieved more than 80 per cent of revenue, five months before the world cup, and I am happy to share that, together with the team, we have reached the highest revenue in the history of the world cup in the region.
Promofix team since January used a different approach while keeping the match with TV as the hero, we coupled it with digital tools that allowed the advertiser to understand the audience better and be able to retarget them later on while using Blis TV sync technology and allowed brands to reach their target audience better.
It was a no-brainer to start with the global sponsors and were able to land most of them using the right approach, commercially and strategically, and more importantly, the close relationship with the channel allowed us to serve the brands’ strategic objectives and customise some packages, inspired from the need of customers.
Backed by data through the analysis of TV and digital channels, we were able to tackle some of the non-conventional advertisers and land a few with more in the pipeline. Moreover, our approach allowed us to commit to brands on viewership numbers and even performance KPIs such as App installs and sometimes transactions capitalising on TV as awareness and supported with digital tools.
In the last month before the world cup, we have been able to close more than 90 per cent of all budgets and achieved the highest figures from brands ever spent on the world cup. I am confident that we could have reached much more if Egypt qualified for the world cup.
The opening ceremony followed by the lineup of advertisers on TV was spectacular and the 22 minutes of ads before Saudi beats Argentina was a first on beIN and we are proud of that triumph.
During the whole period we were getting reports from international channels claiming that they were not able to fill breaks, this didn’t stop us but was more of an incentive for us to do better and offer creative tools to convince and measure the effectiveness of campaigns and would love to share some of the takings.
- An integrated approach is a must for the success of the campaign with tech at its core, otherwise, the message will be soon lost.
- Choosing adequate digital tools coupled with a TV campaign will lead to increased consideration and conversion.
- Commitment to the advertisers on deliveries supported by digital tools.
- Success is only achieved with preparation and preparation time is more important than execution time.
- Team, team and team is the key and smart incentives are a must.
- Internal Communication and working closely with the content providers are key elements for success, we are not working on silos we are part of a holistic ecosystem.
In conclusion, success is only possible by having skin in the game and offering an all-inclusive approach taking smart risks and commitment to deliveries and engagement.
The previous period wasn’t always bright we had to sail through tough tides for many reasons and continuous rumours but in the end, we succeeded and an enormous thank you to the team, you created some nice stories to tell about achievements.
