5 Facebook case studies from the Middle East, Europe and Africa

Leaving behind traditional channels of marketing and advertising, Facebook has been a trailblazer with an enviable wind in their sails, making them the go-to platform for established brands and startups too. Today, let us unearth inspiration from triumphant Facebook Case Studies from the Middle East, Europe and Africa.

Facebook has helped some of the world’s biggest brands, and new businesses to drive sales, boost brand awareness, generate leads and overall heighten and increase their social media presence. Businesses continue to harness the potential of Facebook’s wide and comprehensive reach to thrive and script some impressive Facebook Case Studies in the process.

Coca Cola, Nescafe, Melia Hotels, Volkswagen and UNICEF are among the biggest brands in the world to be a part of successful Facebook Case Studies, turning to the platform to raise awareness and promote their brand and products in countries such as Turkey, Egypt, Spain and others from the the Middle East, Europe and Africa.

1. Coca Cola Turkey

The world’s most popular beverage brand relied on Facebook to connect with their Turkish consumers and raise awareness around their new global campaign tagline, Taste The Feeling.

Coca Cola leveraged Video, Adverts and other Facebook tools to reach their target audience which helped the company achieve the following results.

Coca Cola worked with agencies, iProspect and Carat to devise a strategy that delivered fantastic results by analyzing audience data effectively to acquire a significant ROI from their ad spends.

Their target audience being 15 to 29 year old youth, Facebook also incorporated Instagram into their strategy and used reach and frequency buying to achieve their goal. On a parallel note with Television ads, Coca Cola Turkey complemented their social media strategy with video ads that banked on storytelling.

"Facebook played a critical role in the Coca-Cola Taste the Feeling campaign by delivering the message to 52% of our core target audience and driving engagement. There has been significant increase in our key performance indicators with the help of Facebook as one of the drivers in our media mix.”, Venüs Özdemir, Connections, Media and Exp Manager, Turkey, Caucasus and Central Asia Region,The Coca-Cola Company

"Our strong partnership with Facebook enabled a creative environment where great ideas came to life. Campaigns we’ve ran fuelled awareness for Coca Cola’s new positioning through advanced audience targeting technologies such as reach and frequency and customer cluster targeting. Close to 20 million unique reach for this campaign was an impressive result that encourages us to further leverage Facebook’s branding solutions”, said Başak Turhanoğlu, Managing Director, iProspect Turkey.

The 10-week long campaign helped Coca Cola Turkey carve a new path on Facebook.

2. Nescafe Egypt

The Swiss brand, a world leader in the instant coffee sector, Nescafe intended to drive sales and raise awareness of their product in the North African country of Egypt by harnessing the social aspects of coffee.

Nescafe Egypt’s campaign makes it to the Facebook Success Stories category with impressive results through double digit lifts in ad recall.

Nescafe Egypt worked closely with Performics Egypt to develop their two pronged campaign, First Tag, which ran on Facebook and Instagram based on the two platforms ‘tagging’ feature, a common practice among the social media savvy populace.

The message that Nescafe wished to convey was that of reconnecting and sharing a cup of coffee with an old friend, a strongly emotional undertone that is one of the advertising industry’s most tried, trusted and tested formulas.

Maximizing their reach through Facebook, Nescafe sought out their target audience of 18 to 35-year-olds, urging them to tag their friends in the comments section and reach out to their friends to reconnect over a cup of coffee.

"Facebook’s advanced targeting capabilities offer brand builders a unique opportunity to reach our core target audience where they are most receptive to brand communication. For our First Tag campaign, we chose the reach and frequency buying tool, enabling us to reach over 60% of our target audience, in turn generating unprecedented levels of engagement with our consumers.”, Mohamed Abo El Fotouh, Consumer Communications & eBusiness Manager, Nestlé

A campaign that is almost two years old, Nescafe Egypt’s First Tag succeeded at fulfilling their objectives before Facebook turned into an advertising juggernaut.

Also Read: 5 Instagram Case Studies from APAC to learn from

3. Melia Hotels, Spain

Melia Hotels from Mallorca, Spain have been in the game for over 60 years and turned to Facebook with a specific goal in mind. The luxury hotel and resorts chain wished to make the most of the resources they spent and they managed to ace their association with Facebook.

Melia Hotels’ reduced their costs and enhanced their online bookings by retargeting consumers on Facebook from the ones who had browsed their website, making it more likely for them to stay with Melia Hotels.

A campaign that could be termed global, Melia Hotels targeted consumers from all the world’s major regions with Facebook’s dynamic ads, to showcase relevant properties from regions that the consumers were browsing Melia’s website.

Placing a Facebook pixel on Melia’s website, the company collected valuable information which they used to retarget website visitors on Facebook through carousel ads that tailored the ads as per the locations that they had searched for.

“Dynamic ads for travel allowed us to show the best product and message for each user based on their interest in our properties, and delivered 6.7X return on ad spend compared to our legacy retargeting campaigns.”, José Luis Aranda, Global Digital Director, Meliá Hotels International

Melia Hotels enjoyed a whopping 79% decrease in cost per booking for their campaign which began in August 2016 and delivered better results than any of their previous campaigns.

4. UNICEF – Middle East and North Africa

The United Nations program focused towards the welfare and development of children and women in need of assistance all over the world, UNICEF wanted to draw the attention of the entire world towards the Convention of the Rights of the Child.

UNICEF’s Middle East and North African branch represents the well being and promotes the rights and the plight of over 157 million children in need. In order to create awareness and reach a global audience, UNICEF sought out Facebook’s worldwide appeal and global reach, yielding 6.9 million people reached.

UNICEF worked with Advvise and Clickology Online, a PR firm, and a digital agency, to create compelling videos that captured the hardships, danger, and plight of children living in the Middle Eastern and North African region.

Facebook’s video views ad objective was tapped to optimize the views for the videos, showing them to people who were most likely to view them, react in a strong manner and were most likely to spread the message to a wider audience, such as journalists, influential personalities, activists and more.

UNICEF managed to create a staggering amount of awareness around the world for the 25th anniversary of the Convention of the Rights of the Child with the campaign videos racking up millions of views.

5. Volkswagen Dubai

The German automobile manufacturers aimed to widen their footprint in Dubai and the Northern Emirates, where the company has been partners with Al Nabooda Automobiles, authorized Volkswagen dealers in Dubai since 1976.

An activity that lasted for 3 days delivered results that impressed Volkswagen who was skeptical about relying on digital promotion only but is something the company would not hesitate to do in future.

Volkswagen Dubai offered an ’72 hour sale’ and promoted it through video and link ads predominantly on Facebook, and also on Instagram. By boosting their posts, Volkswagen Dubai made sure their posts occupied the prime spots on their Facebook target audience’s News Feeds in Dubai and the Northern Emirates.

"We were skeptical at first to pour our budget into digital only, but we were very pleased to see that running our campaign on a versatile platform like Facebook delivered the reach to the right target audience and delivered direct tangible results for car sales.", Bisher Yousfi, Marketing Manager, Volkswagen Al Nabooda Automobiles LLC

Volkswagen Dubai’s perceived gamble did not turn out to be a gamble at all, and the company generated favorable metrics by relying on Facebook to deliver cost effective results. The campaign ran from 10th to 12th March 2016 and was a success for Volkswagen Dubai.

A successful campaign is the one that fulfils the needs of the business and the objective of the brand - be it leads for sales or reducing cost per lead. Every helpful campaign is a feat worth celebrating. With more such campaigns, listed in one book of reference, Social Samosa is back with the Yearbook of Social Media Campaigns 2017.

With more such campaigns, listed in one book of reference, Social Samosa is back with the Yearbook of Social Media Campaigns 2017. #SSYearbook17 picks the best campaigns from various industries and domains, with trends and forecasts from the experts, stay tuned.