STC's Um Ali browsed her way across Saudi Arabia and started a national race

Make broadband reliability entertaining inside a branded-content platform, in a kingdom where a woman walking the streets unaccompanied still turns heads.

The film follows Um Ali roaming Saudi Arabia unaccompanied, glued to her mobile, inadvertently catching the attention and imagination of everyone she passes — an accidental, gently comic sign of progress as the kingdom lifts the ban on women driving and allows women to work and study without a male guardian's permission.

Over 2 million views in one week. Um Ali became a social media and sports icon, sparking the 'Race Um Ali' national marathon organised by the Riyadh Women's Walking Group. Within a year stc became broadband market leader with a 22% revenue and share increase, and Laywagif became the most-visited YouTube channel in the kingdom and the world's number-one telco channel.

A Saudi woman obliviously walks the length of the country in this film from J. Walter Thompson Riyadh for the Saudi Telecom Company (stc). The spot is an episode of Laywagif, the MENA region's first online branded content hub, created to promote the brand's reliable broadband service. It introduces Um Ali, a Saudi matriarch who lets nothing come between her and her browsing.

Absorbed by her fast and reliable internet connection, Um Ali unintentionally roams the length and breadth of Saudi Arabia on her mobile, catching the attention and imagination of everyone she passes. The sight of a woman walking the streets unaccompanied was still relatively unusual in the kingdom, which had just seen social changes — lifting the ban on women driving and allowing women to work and study without a male guardian's permission — making smartphone-addicted Um Ali an accidental and gently comic sign of progress.

The humorous film went viral within a week, garnering over 2 million views and turning Um Ali into a social media and sports icon who even sparked a national marathon, the 'Race Um Ali', organised by the Riyadh Women's Walking Group. The wide variety of shows on the Laywagif hub also let stc run competitions to cast actors and hunt for new directors.

The product claim — browsing too good to put down — is dramatised to a comic extreme that needs no translation.

An unaccompanied woman crossing the country on foot made the film a talking point about social change, not just telecoms.

Humour kept a potentially sensitive subject light, so audiences shared it rather than argued about it.

The character escaped the ad: a real walking group turned her into a national sporting event.

A character who embodies your product benefit too completely — too absorbed to notice anything — can carry social meaning far beyond the media buy that funded her.

Within a year of the Laywagif platform's work, stc became the broadband market leader with a 22% increase in revenue and market share. Laywagif became the most-visited YouTube channel in the kingdom and the world's number-one telco YouTube channel; its stars were sought by other brands and shows, and its competitions gave stc a large database of Saudi talent and an ability to spot future celebrities.