Saudi National Day 2019: A Blast from the Past: Arab News needed to own this event. We wanted readers to be reminded of a time pre 1979 before the Iranian revolution and the siege of Makkah affected The Kingdom.

We produced a special 28-page souvenir edition with the showpiece, a double page cover wrap illustration by Peter Quinnell. Inside of the cover wrap was a graphic showing key dates in The Kingdom's history. We produced content across all Arab News platforms.

Assets:
- 28-page souvenir newspaper. (Selection of pages attached)
- Created animations of the cover wrap illustration. (GIF attached)
- Produced a hero video telling the story of Saudi's history and the period of time where it moved away from moderate Islam.
- Published stories about Saudi and it's history in print and on the Arab News website.
- Produced social media content with social media cards highlighting key dates in The Kingdom's history. Bite sized Saudi fact cards. (Example attached)
- Created a nostalgic video highlighting celebrities, sport and musicians in the illustration and linking them with audio recordings from the 70s.
- We created screensavers of the illustration both static and animated for readers to download free to devices.

The objective was to make readers feel nostalgic and remind them of some of their favourite brands, music, celebrities, moments and explain to the world what happened to Saudi Arabia in 1979 and highlight the rapid, recent changes linked to Vision 2030. This was all aligned to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman pledging a 'moderate, open' Saudi Arabia in his speech at the FII. We also wanted to engage with audiences on a global scale and we printed internationally to achieve this. Saudi National Day was an opportunity for Arab News to tell the story of The Kingdom, it's history, challenges it has faced and its very bright future thanks to Vision 2030. The event allowed Arab News to tell a story few people have heard before.

Figures SND 2019:
- Arab News was printed internationally on the day in UAE and the UK as well as Saudi Arabia.
- An extra 25,000 copies were printed.
- Digital numbers were excellent and the National Day content performed better and engaged with a bigger audience than standard Arab News content.
- Total page views online - 1.1 million which was 1% of total traffic for the year.

- YouTube Hero video - 9,665 views.

Facebook:
- Hero Video reach:
460K reach.
 
- Nostalgic audio video:
38 K reach.
 
- General Saudi National Day project numbers:
Impressions: 5.1 M.
Number of Interactions: 38.6K.
 
Twitte:
- Hero Video:
220k Impressions.
32K media view.
 
- Nostalgic audio video:
46K impressions.
5.9K media views.
 
- General Saudi National Day project numbers:
3.2M impressions.
2.8K retweets.
6.3K likes.
Engagement Rate 9%.

Hero video: https://youtu.be/zHzyPZaKPeE