Egypt is facing a major challenge hindering its position to regain its ranking as a top global destination; this challenge is perception. To challenge the global perception, we moved away from traditional tourism advertising to an inside-out approach where the international campaign beginning from home. The concept was to capture positive that reflects the authenticity and fusion of Egypt’s offerings, and get the message across from the people of Egypt to the people of the world. The world of travel and tourism communication changed, moving towards digital platforms and peer-to-peer being key factors in considering, planning and booking. #thisisegypt, began as an initiative from Egypt’s youth, to showcase their country in a different light; adopted as the official Egyptian tourism hashtag as a tool to counter the negative imagery circulating globally via social media and share the diverse experiences. We recruited local social media influencers to advocate and encourage their local followers to show the world their perspective on Egypt. Thisisegypt.com acted as a platform to curate the images. Upon launching to the masses an online video was seeded to invite the rest of Egypt to explore their country and show it to the world. This video was then picked up by local talk shows. As well as, several local media outlets offering free airing of the video, to maintain the momentum; in addition to publications, online and print, featuring call to action messages. All without any media spend. This invitation was extend to our Arab neighbors to revisit as well as showing the international community the diversity of experiences Egypt has to offer. Finally, once the hashtag reached 80,000+ posts, it was time to offer recognition to those locals who shared unique experience. These images have been showcased through TV, OOH, and digital; all with zero media spend.
Result
Since adopting the hashtag, pickup on Instagram has only been rising - starting with under 10,000 posts, the initial activation of the hashtag with influencers generated 20,000 more posts on Instagram in a short time. Once officially launched to masses on December 10th, the campaign picked up by local channels and aired daily on nightly talk shows with high viewership, online the push within 48 hours received 300,000 views without any paid media. Getting picked up my local media channels for a total value of 10,997,018 Egyptian Pounds of free airing on TV alone. As purely organic hype, Egyptians’ interest in seeing their country in a different light, and in turn showing the world, was clear. Currently the hashtag on Instagram alone has received 82,000+ posts, in merely 2 months of its official launch. While other similar local initiatives reached 88,000 posts in 2 years. The hashtag gained up to 200,000 total post on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram since launch; and still growing exponentially. As well as being adopted by local brands in their own activations, the hashtag is quickly becoming a habitual tag for any content being shared about Egypt and its diverse experiences. Reaching 700 million total impressions