The Stories of Mecca: The first crowd-sourced vertical format film.

In 2020, due to the situation and the health crisis owing to COVID-19, Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, has been under absolute lockdown, even during Ramadan and Eid (two occasions that matter to 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide).

Muslims cannot travel for pilgrimages to the city in Saudi Arabia. Even those Muslims living in Saudi Arabia cannot travel to Mecca. This has never happened in our lifetime, globally.

With these lockdowns and travel restrictions prevalent in Saudi Arabia, Ramadan 2020 and Eid 2020 were uniquely challenging, on a spiritual level, for those who followed the faith. 

Almosafer is a popular travel platform from Saudi Arabia (think Booking.com’s equivalent in Saudi Arabia). With Almosafer, we decided that if people can't travel to Mecca, their stories of Mecca can travel the world.

Memories of Mecca were brought to people, in a film made by people themselves, titled ‘The Stories of Mecca’.

On the production front, given that the film couldn’t be shot due to lockdowns in Mecca, a campaign on social media (Twitter, Instagram and WhatsApp) launched during Ramadan invited people everywhere to share their memories of Mecca.

People from 52 countries contributed. Over 20 hours of stories were sifted through and then, those social media stories were pieced together in a film that’s told through people’s social media stories about Mecca. Because even though Mecca may be locked down, its stories will go on.

Being mobile-first and social-first in its execution, the "stories" format made the film easily shareable and portable across mobile and across social platforms.

The film garnered over 87 million completely organic cross-platform views via social stories (Instagram and Snapchat) and WhatsApp marketing i.e. the 3 most popular channels in Saudi Arabia (reaching 123 million views overall) and achieved a 100% positive sentiment score.

The campaign was ranked #1 for Direction on AdForum in June 2020 and it has also featured on leading platforms like LBB Online, Mosques of Dubai, Arabian Marketer, Tourism Authority, The Stable and travelled across 70 countries worldwide.

As a result, Almosafer’s brand buzz increased by 16%, its brand reputation increased by 23% and the intent to book trips to Mecca with Almosafer increased by 19% for when the skies open.