Fashion brands are working on actively engaging the online community in the Middle East region; this shouldn’t be surprising since research by Rebtel, a free call service, has shown that women are more likely to use social media to connect than men [study].

Vero Moda, an international fashion brand for women with branches across the Middle East, decided to go online and expose their brand to the ladies online. The real challenge was to stay true to the brand and respect the conservativeness of the society it is targeting. We talked to Zafer Younis, CEO of The Online Project, one of the region’s leading social media utilization companies, about what they did to help Vero Moda successfully reach their target audience through Facebook.

The idea was sparked when “we noticed a trend where fans were eager to share how they put their clothes together and recognized this as an opportunity to use their passion to create the first user generated catalogue” said Zafer, “We selected the most active fans on the page and invited them to participate in styling a model with their favorite clothes from Vero Moda.”

The fans picked the clothes, dressed the models and attended the photo shoots! The same was done in Jordan and Egypt, engaging a wide range of styles. The photos were uploaded online for feedback from the Facebook fan page and the friends of the “fans-turned-stylists”.

According to Zafer “(…) the fan page base grew by 85% during the promotion and sales increased by 27% the week following the promotion and 40% for the week after.” The reasons for the success of the campaign wre a clear vision on the aims of the project, value for the brand and the customer which was reflected in the offline and online integration of the campaign, and ROI orientation.

Engaging the online community is very vital, to the point that the team at The Online Project developed their own in-house solution to measure the interaction rate of their campaign and keep track of the sales that have been generated from the campaign. These metrics have worked well for Vero Moda who currently has over 270,000 fans actively engaging on their Facebook page.

“I have seen studies suggesting that more than 50% of the internet traffic in the Middle East is forum based” said Zafer. “Unfortunately they do not offer the same level of targeting and social networking” which is why Facebook remains one of the main mediums being utilized by brands, but things may change as social media continues to take a different form in the lives of people in the MENA region.