Building its campaign around the region’s most competitive retail season – Ramadan, Home Centre launched a social-first campaign that transformed passive participation into an active uplift of 595 per cent in comments, while achieving 70 per cent regional reach.
Owning the cultural moment
The brand built the campaign with the objective to position Home Centre as the “definitive destination” for Ramadan home preparation across the GCC – one that provides everything needed to host gatherings under one roof.
During Ramadan, when the retail space is very competitive, the brand’ challenge was to build a campaign that focused not only on visibility, but also differentiation. The goal was to get past seasonal clichés and retail clutter and create a campaign that truly captured the spirit of Ramadan while bringing Home Centre’s curated collections to life in a way that was modern, relevant and inspiring.
Building on its previous year’s campaign, Your Ramadan Answered,Building on its previous year’s campaign, Your Ramadan Answered, Home Centre adopted a more dynamic, participatory and socially-led concept. It even introduced a gamified layer to actively engage and involve audiences.
This supported three key objectives of the brand: increased engagement, deepening emotional brand connection and reinforcing its position as the go-to destination for homeware.
The campaign’s main selling point features a wide range of competitively priced furniture and home essentials. Coordinated trends, newness, and full home solutions were highlighted to drive both engagement and commercial conversion during the pre-Ramadan purchase period.
The films
At the heart of the campaign was a trio of gamified hero films: The Iftar Meltdown, Movie Night Crisis and Chaos Before the Crescent.
Each film was focused around one relatable Ramadan scenario such as Iftar food getting burnt, kids breaking objects while playing etc. The film presented the problem in the form of a traditional riddle mechanic – a Fawazeer, inviting audiences to guess the solution and engage with the content. The brand then launched a reveal film that unveiled the solution – which was rooted in Home Centre’s product offering.
The campaign’s scenarios were relatable and domestic in nature in order to resonated directly with the lived experiences of its main target audience – which include female homeowners. These homeowners are key decision makers when it comes to Ramadan home preparation and purchasing, since they play a central role in planning, hosting and creating the gathering spaces throughout the season.
Moving from traditional festive storytelling, the campaign worked towards an approach that turned passive viewers into
active viewers.
The films were conceptualised and created in an interactive and narrative format that encouraged comments, speculation and repeat viewing – extending the lifecycle of each of the creative assets beyond the traditional one-off film.
The campaign launch strategy
The campaign was launched using an integrated Go-To Market strategy across all GCC markets including the UAE, KSA, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain,
It was rolled out across multiple channels including paid and organic social, out-of-home, influencer engagement, events and activations and in-mall and in-store screens.
To build anticipation, the campaign first went live on 2 January, kicking off with the Ramadan character teasers. Then the following week, on 8 January, the first riddle film went live with the following riddle and reveal films being released at regular intervals through Ramadan.
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Social and influencer
To keep the momentum going, these the films were shared across YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and TikTok as short platform-native videos along with static content that highlighted the key collections.
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The staggered content drop format allowed the brand to maintain momentum during the pre-Ramadan period which is also the audience’s highest consideration window.
To further extend the reach and incorporate cultural relevance, the brand hosted two large scale events in UAE and KSA which were attended by more than 100 content creators. These included names such as Nora and Khalid, Sleman Aaji, Nour Aljabri, Abdullah Jamil, Khadija Ashraf and Nada Baeshen.
As a result of the event, the creators generated more than 1000 pieces of content which further amplified organic reach and sustained campaign visibility beyond paid placements.
The results
The success of the campaign was defined by three metrics: reach, engagement and commercial impact.
The campaign aimed to target 70 per cent of the total reach of the brand’s relevant audience across Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat.
Early results showed that the brand’s achieved a 81 per cent reach on TikTok for the first film, and a 78 per cent reach on instagram.
It also set the engagement benchmarks for the success of this campaign against last year’s campaign. Noting an increase an 595 per cent in comments on this year’s film versus last year’s Ramadan film, the brand shared that this indicated stronger audience participation and cultural resonance.
Increased in-store footfall, higher website traffic and session were monitored to determine and measure the commercial impact of the campaign.
The campaign will run for a total of 72 days, extending through Ramadan till end of the Holy Month around March 18/19.
Credits
Creative Agency: Leo Burnett ME
Production House: Feel Productions
Director: Adham Obeid
