Qatar, Doha 20th June 2021 – In a rapidly evolving digital age, Qatar Postal Services Company (Qatar Post) is continuously investing in connecting the younger generation to the heart of its services. In line with these efforts, the country’s national postal service provider recently joined hands with Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q) to gain insights into the needs of its young consumers. 

As part of this collaboration, strategic communications students from NU-Q were encouraged to develop new marketing strategies for Qatar Post to help invigorate the brand experience for the younger generation. Teams were tasked with creating a fully integrated campaign to connect today’s youth with the brand’s portfolio of services and offer solutions to their diversifying needs. 

This collaboration is part of the capstone project under NU-Q’s Senior Strategic Communication Course that aims to bridge the academic-professional gap and provide students with a unique real-world learning experience. For this year’s edition, the project was technically led by the university together with Qatar’s leading communications firm Grey Doha. 

In the first leg of the project that kicked off in January 2021, students were introduced to agency fundamentals that drive the end-to-end campaign life cycle – from briefing, to ideation, creative execution, and post-campaign reporting stages. Students were then challenged to a real-market scenario with an exciting campaign brief for Qatar Post including specific timelines, budgets, objectives and campaign KPIs. While putting lessons into practice, the students presented a plan book detailing their campaign lifecycle, content, and creative multimedia strategies as well as monitoring and evaluation frameworks.

Commenting on the programme, Chairman and managing director, Mr. Faleh Al Naemi, said: “Our goal has always been to transform our products and service as we move forward in this digital era, to provide our consumers what they really need. We recognise the importance to connect to the country’s young generation and offer them services that are relevant to their aspirations. Our partnership with NUQ has empowered us with a fresh perspective of this particular consumer segment, shared directly by the youth themselves. We appreciate the innovative thinking that the students have demonstrated through this programme and look forward to putting their strategies into practice.”

On his part, NUQ’s professor, Ilhem Allagui said: “At NU-Q’s strategic communication programme, the students learn by doing. We are fortunate to have enthusiastic and supportive partners like Qatar Post to supplement the conceptual learning with professional experience. This year’s programme has been an enlightening experience not just for our students but also for our partner Qatar Post, who have mutually benefitted from unique insights and market realities of an important demographic, that can be easily leveraged to shape future strategies and solutions”.

Building on the success of these programmes, Qatar Post and NU-Q will continue to empower the next generation of industry leaders to celebrate creativity in the face of adversity. Think with innovation, thrive with resilience - will be the mantra for future talents to rebuild the communications industry in a post-pandemic world.