Social Media Day Invited Digital Marketing Agencies For A Retreat A Few Months Before The Summit

Generously sponsored by JWT Cairo, US Embassy, Lenovo, Digital Republic, and Digitology, Social Media Day - Egypt gave a handful of digital marketing agencies a retreat in El-Gouna, Red Sea, from the 28th to the 31st of March. From workshops, to talks, and ending with a competition, the social media gurus were split into six groups and were hired by real clients to come up with a social media campaign; those clients included Buseet, Careem, Haribo Arabia, Orascom, and Anghami. 

"The idea behind the retreat is to get people out of the office mood, and engage them in more interactive sessions and networking than the summit," Social Media Day's Senior Events Manager Nagla Saad tells Startup Scene. "This year, the idea was simulation. Every team would manage a campaign for a real client; to work together on a brief, strategy, and content." 

Among the workshop given, JWT's very own Salma Hammouda gave one about how to perfect a brief. "The brief is the first tool that kicks off the creative process, so be it digital, be it the traditional way of doing things, unless you don't have a good brief, you're not going to do anything that is impactful," she tells Startup Scene. "With the digital age, people tend to work things so fast, to the point that they tend to ignore... basically they don't want to spend time writing a brief and thinking it through. My only excuse is that we should be going forward not backwards."  

At the end of the retreat, the team that was hired by Buseet won first place and went home with a EGP 12,000 cheque offered by Haribo Arabia. Whereas, the team hired by Anghami, won second place, while the team hired by Haribo won third.