Branding

Zain’s brand sits at the heart of the Group’s identity, serving as a promise to customers and a clear articulation of its vision and strategic focus. In the Brand Finance 2025 rankings, the Zain brand was valued at USD 3.5 billion, a 14.5% YoY increase from USD 3.037 billion in 2024, and assigned a AAA- brand rating, reaffirming the strength of its equity across MENA. This recognition reflects sustained investment in compelling campaigns, corporate sustainability, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, and ongoing innovation and network upgrades that enhance service quality and customer experience.

During the year, Zain Group strengthened its brand consistency, strategic alignment, and regional impact. Across markets, ensuring that the Zain identity was expressed with radiance, heart, and belonging while exhibiting emotion and clarity, safeguarding a unified customer experience across every touchpoint. This effort combined long-term brand stewardship with agile execution, enabling teams to accelerate delivery while protecting the integrity of the brand promise. By aligning brand expression across channels and markets, Zain Group reinforced recognition, trust, and a clear sense of belonging among audiences across the company’s footprint and beyond.

A defining milestone was the successful launch of the internally focused Purpose Campaign, developed as a core activation of the Group’s ‘4WARD – Progress with Purpose’ strategy. Anchored in the strategy’s Purpose and Action force, the campaign translated the company’s purpose of “Better Lives. Lasting Connections” into a clear, shared narrative that could be instilled in every employee and activated consistently across markets.

Activation of the initiative across digital channels and physical environments, also witnessed ensuring consistent application across virtual platforms and real-life settings. The engagement covered assets for virtual executions as well as the real-life artworks and applications required for Group-wide adoption. This translation of Purpose into tangible creative expressions enabled faster activation across markets, ensured creative coherence from concept to delivery, and strengthened internal alignment around a shared narrative that supports the Group’s strategic direction.

To ensure consistency and elevate brand equity, the company rolled out new and streamlined branding governance platform across the Group and its subsidiaries. This governance framework reinforced clear standards, enabled structured onboarding, and established a consistent review process before communications and campaigns go live. By improving alignment across markets and reducing fragmentation, governance strengthened brand consistency and supported higher-quality execution across media, partnerships, retail environments, digital content, internal communications, and partner activations, ensuring every release reflects a shared standard of excellence. 

On a strategic level, Zain Group finalized refreshed brand guidelines across subsidiaries, delivered through an online format that improves accessibility, clarity, and adoption throughout the organization. The guidelines provide practical direction for applying the brand through various channels, ensuring that visual identity, tone of voice, and messaging hierarchy are executed consistently while allowing teams to tailor content to local market needs. By making guidance easier to access and apply, the Group strengthened compliance, and enabled colleagues to execute confidently with fewer revisions.

In parallel, Zain refreshed the brand strategy to ensure full alignment with the overarching business strategy and evolved the brand architecture to strengthen and elevate the brand. This work clarified how the portfolio is structured, how sub-brands relate to the masterbrand, and how Zain can communicate with greater precision while preserving a unified identity. The result is a stronger strategic foundation that supports future growth, enables coherent brand expansion, and reinforces trust with customers and stakeholders, while providing a clear foundation for future services, partnerships, and experiences.

From a marketing and engagement perspective, Zain focuses on high impact initiatives that blend entertainment, community, and digital reach. In 2025, Zain’s annual Children’s Play, “Zain Who Knows No Fear,” was a major success, premiering on the first day of Eid Al Fitr and running for 10 days at The Arena Kuwait. It attracted over 60,000 attendees, while its content generated over 43 million views across YouTube and TikTok combined. Staged on the world’s largest circular children’s stage, the production paired a dazzling visual experience with a storyline centered on confronting “monsters” that represent negative emotions and thoughts, reinforcing themes of resilience and self-belief. The initiative demonstrated Zain’s ability to create large-scale, family-first experiences that translate into meaningful digital momentum, reinforcing the brand’s relevance across audiences and strengthening affinity through memorable moments. By creating an experience that resonated on site and online, Zain reinforced its leadership in entertainment and family engagement across the region.

Each year, Zain’s annual Ramadan TVC is widely anticipated for its bold messages and emotionally resonant storytelling that consistently strike a chord across the region. The Group’s 2025 TVC achieved 79 million views on YouTube and TikTok combined, while also going viral within days of launch, generating over 6 million views and tens of thousands of audience reactions across major social platforms.

The film stood out for its emotionally resonant storytelling and a courageous narrative voice that sparked conversation on sensitive regional realities. Filmed on location across Gaza, Lebanon, and other affected regions, the TVC blended authentic imagery with a compelling message of perseverance and defiance, reinforcing the Zain brand’s presence alongside communities in moments that matter. At its core, the narrative reframed “presence” as more than physical attendance, positioning it as belonging, resisting, and rebuilding.

The storyline delivered a clear statement on resilience and the enduring bond between people and homeland, underscoring that land and identity are not transactional, and that communities rise from hardship to reclaim, restore, and rebuild with hope. Visually, the film used powerful symbolism, such as a flagpole combining the Lebanese cedar, Gaza’s keys, and Syria’s oud, reflecting endurance, the right of return, and resilience through art.

Adding depth and authenticity, the TVC featured the voice of renowned artist Majed Al Mohandes, turning the soundtrack into an anthem of resilience. It also highlighted real figures whose stories carried symbolic weight, including Maria from Gaza and Renad, the young chef known for sharing her cooking during the bombings, reinforcing the theme that determination transcends age.

Another widely anticipated annual tradition, the Zain 2025 Eid television commercial reached 56 million views on YouTube and TikTok combined. The content embraced a joyful, celebratory tone, featuring song and dance.

The film was led by the talented Lama Al Kinani, widely recognized as Aziza from the renowned television series Shara’ Al Aasha. In the campaign, she embodied multiple personas, including a creative homage to the legendary Souad Husni and her iconic role as Aziza. The TVC captured the essence of Eid joy and illustrated how the excitement of the celebration often leads people to express themselves in spontaneous and unexpected ways, offering a fresh and engaging take on welcoming Eid.

Collectively, these initiatives underscore Zain Group’s role as a strategic partner to operating companies, translating strategy into execution, protecting brand equity through governance, and delivering creative work that resonates across the region. By combining refreshed foundations with consistent stewardship and culturally relevant storytelling, Zain strengthens its brand promise and deepens emotional connections with audiences at scale.

Zain’s focus on promoting corporate sponsorship and participation, brand creativity and messaging, product and service launches, Corporate Sustainability, Inclusion, Diversity and Equity and other activities across its markets and the wider region through social media channels resulted in an impressive increase in followers, engagement, and views across social media channels.

Groupwide, Zain has a social media following of 36 million fans and annually having over 200 million YouTube and 150 million TikTok views of creative videos published, with many of them going viral.

Social media teams across Zain’s footprint regularly produce appealing and engaging content, consumed by responsive followers. This has resulted in a loyal social media base across the Zain footprint, numbering over 36 million, with 14.6 million fans on Facebook, 6.5 million followers on X, 3.5 million on Instagram, 4.5 million YouTube, 5 million on TikTok and 1.3 million on LinkedIn.

During 2025, Zain Group and its operations’ social media channels received 4 billion views and 1.5 billion interactions, remarkable engagements that reaffirm the appeal and power of the Zain brand across the globe.