Positive video content that makes a difference: Fly a “Tayarah”
With an economic turmoil, a dollar on a rage, brands in Egypt are left with declining marketing and advertising budgets, and a struggle to maintain their public brand awareness. Among the very few last options available to those brands, shifting to digital marketing might come as a life saver.
In September of the year 2014, Mohamed El Bassiouni, with his co-Founder Ramez Youssef, started Tayarah, their own creative digital video production agency, or as they please to call it “a hub for digital video content”. Tayarah handles everything video production related for clients willing to operate a digital campaign, they create the idea, execute it, and contribute to the video distribution through a wide variety of digital platforms, they also do their own video content.
“Creating video content. That’s all what we do. We do not want to do anything else. An agency that does everything, social media, marketing, PR, and video production, is destined for failure”, says El Bassiouni, who graduated as a construction engineer from the Arab Academy for Science & Technology.
Video content that inspires people through social media: A brand promise
“We see social media as the future”, El Bassiouni says. The founders have always been believers in the power of social media, the company even started as a natural evolution of an online video magazine, called “DiSalata”, they launched in 2011. They used to produce entertainment videos aimed at spreading inspiration amidst a popular revolution in Egypt.
“We try to inspire people to take action through our video content, we encourage them to act”, El Bassiouni elaborates. Tayarah tries to deliver on the same core values when producing content for its clients, “we try to inspire, educate and entertain viewers, as much as we can”, he adds.
A brand culture based on randomness, and a little bit of constructive chaos
As expected from a creative video agency, Tayarah struggles to keep generating creative ideas. With a huge human manpower, Egypt is, supposedly, a very rich talent-pool. However, based on Tayarah’s experience, it’s never an easy process to pick the right talents for your brand culture and values.
The right person is not necessarily someone with 10-years of work experience behind him, and a list of huge multinational corporates as previous employers. El Bassiouni has had a similar experience with this, where a highly qualified candidate simply did not fit in their brand culture. “We like to be random, it’s part of our culture. This randomness is part of our creative process. For our brand, may be younger fresher people are more relevant”, he explains.
Adopting positive change as a brand essence
In addition to numerous successful digital video marketing campaigns for a list of respectable clients, including Nestle, Garnier and Johnson’s, Tayarah also excelled at introducing new concepts to the local online video marketplace. Their online short series “3ala Fein ya Negm?”, sponsored by UBER, introduced Egyptian celebrities to the online-only video series scene.
As much as they loved to adopt new online video concepts, El Bassiouni seemed extremely passionate about adopting positive change in the community through inspiring digital video content. “Mish Impossible” is another online video campaign produced by Tayarah that caters to positive social change, and community values. “Our brand essence is positive content that makes a difference. We do our part, we try to inspire people to take action through our video content.”, he says.
Future perspectives: New platforms, new localities
While TV is entirely not a part of their strategy, Tayarah is looking forward to explore new future digital platforms that might arise, including virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR). “We will accommodate to new and emerging technologies, as long as it relates to video content production”, El Bassiouni says.
In the meantime, they are working on expanding to all current digital video platforms, e.g. netflix, as well as other internet TV services. Tayarah aims to introduce an online series before the end of 2017, and may be online-only films in the future. They are also looking forward to expand regionally, with a local appeal, in the near future.
“A positive attitude is what drives you to work everyday. If you’re not passionate about anything that you do with your life, you’d better stop doing it”, El Bassiouni sums it up for local brands keen on staying relevant and surviving hardships.
