Change as a Product: Lessons from the Arab?Spring

Social media currently has an impact on the humanity, it plays a vital role to influence the public. According to Facebook’s full-year results for 2017, the social media giant has increased the number of monthly active users to 2.13 billion, which is an almost double population of China. Facebook is the largest country in the world that has no borders, and people can exchange cultural values and influence each other. That type of influence may drive sales to companies to the level that 80% of customers are more likely to purchase from local businesses with positive Facebook reviews according to Bassig. In addition to driving political influence like what the CIA, FBI, and NSA jointly stated with “high confidence” that the Russian government conducted a sophisticated campaign to influence the 44th American presidential elections. which was a part of what known lately by “Cambridge Analytica scandal”.

Back in 2010–2011 when the Arab Spring erupted, the social media scene in the Middle East wasn’t much different. Facebook had around 15 million users in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Egypt occupied the first place in the number of users with 5 million and the initiator of the Arab Spring, Tunisia, was in 3rd place with 2 million. Of the 5 million Egyptian users, almost two-thirds were below 26 years old.

The penetration of Facebook has allowed news, culture, trends and even ideas to spread faster than usual. All traditional media channels in the region at that time were monitored by the government, even if a channel was initiated as private, the government surrounded it with security protocols and legal barriers that limited the spread of information to what the government wanted. The political activists and human rights activists found social media their own safe and authentic source of news.

Productizing Change

All products, regardless of nature, go through the stages of introduction to market, growth, maturity, and decline (Vernon, 1966). A revolution is a coincidental event which people don’t support, but the political and economic scene in Egypt created a fertile environment to erupt such revolution. So there was no intention to revolt to change the current status-quo, young Egyptians were strongly seeking better political and economic gains but the organic movement, unintentionally, followed the stages of the product. As a product manager, I reflect more professionally on that change. The change I was proudly a part of, as one of the protesters on the street.

Introduction stage

On June 6th, 2010, a young Egyptian from Alexandria, Khaled Said, was beaten to death by two policemen, and his tortured body’s photos were leaked and flooded Facebook and Twitter. Wael Ghonim, a Google marketing executive was browsing the Internet, found the photos on Facebook. He realized that Khaled’s persona is like himself and close to your average Egyptian young man.

To define that persona, Amro Ali, who made a comprehensive research about the police brutality incident, found that Khaled was a 28-years old, had a fake name online “Khalid Wave“, wanted to leave the country, was unemployed, sometimes smokes recreational drugs like most Egyptians in the same age group and socioeconomics (the target audience). Then Ghonim founded a Facebook page called “We are all Khaled Said.” The page now is a good example of how a brand should focus on a market segment/user persona. Which was young Egyptians like Khaled? The slogan/tagline was another example of that: “If we aren’t united, we would each be another Khaled.” we would be all Khaled Saeed’. Two minutes after creating the page 300 people liked it, 3 months later it had more than 250,000 likes.

Growth Stage

An indicator that the product reached the growth stage, the early adopters continue to use the product and the product acquires new customers organically. The admins (Ghonim recruited Abdelrahman Mansour as a co-admin) started creating awareness to the new users and spreading the values of change and freedom. The strategy was to influence the followers gradually to gain better political situation in Egypt. One application of spreading the awareness was by asking them to change profile pictures to a unified picture of Khaled Said reach more people even if they aren’t a fan of the page. The next step was calling them for actions, by creating Facebook events asking them to participate in silent protests in different areas holding signs calling for freedom and justice without any interaction with the police officers. The protesting and the awareness have been moved from the digital world to the real world. The admins added a new technique of condescending, which was the crowdsourcing they depended on the citizen journalism and feed the page with content not only to document but also to have a higher reach and higher engagement. My opinion is the customers here were convinced with the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) of change. The Tunisian revolution erupted and the admins took it as a benchmark to form the biggest call for change in Egypt moving the product to the maturity.

Maturity Stage

Maturity stage when the product growth reaches the peak. Nothing on the change product lifetime curve higher than a revolution for change.The admins started influencing the idea of change taking Tunisia’s revolution as a benchmark, they created a Facebook event calling for a revolution on the 25th of January 2011, the event name was “A revolution on torture, unemployment, corruption, and injustice”. The timing was a surprise to the audience and the authority as it was the national day of police. Depending on the previous stages development, the audience who already were convinced with the change idea in the previous stage, audience believed that they could do it and at that point change as a product reached the most mature level and people were willing to give an arm and leg for the product by their souls. The spark started on the 25th for 18 days. The role for the page was to spread news and ideas, continuing advertising the product, depending on crowdsourcing to document all the events happened in the revolution. The content includes the police brutality events on all marches, chants in the Tahrir square and even the funny signs by the creative protesters. The maturity of that product, change, led to the biggest change happened in the Egyptian modern history through marketing on Facebook.

Translation: Today is the 15th, Jan 25th is the national police day and its national holiday. If 100 thousand people marched in Cairo no one will stop us. Can we?

Decline

Finally, the product has fallen for many reasons and for a different point of views. The audience was distracted after the revolution movement, they focused, for example, on the identity of the country whether it’s a theocratic, Islamic state or even a liberated country. That type of discussions created the polarization among the audience, which blocked spreading the awareness among them. The design of the social networks as products helped to increase that type of polarizing by giving the opportunity to every single person to ‘block, unfollow, mute’ any opinions that not agree to her opinion not just harassing opinions. There are too many other reasons but at the end, the product itself has been declined and the customers gave up believing in it. I would recommend this comprehensive article by Wael Ghonim and Jake Rashbass which demonstrates the current situation of the social media which explains the polarizing effect.

The good marketing strategy can productize the values for the right customers. Religions followed well-defined marketing strategy to change people beliefs. Social networks and the companies collect data about users have the great responsibility towards the humanity evolution at that time. So the social media products should be designed to keep pushing the humanity forward helping users to have a better life not to help the people in power to have more control.