Facebook Groups
Where the 45–65 buyer lives. Give for three weeks before asking. Post as named humans, never as a logo. Never discuss politics — one comment ends the brand.
madafa
Digital media · brand · product
The brand, the way families find and book it, and the product that keeps them coming back — made for Madafa.
Madafa — you're expected.
Syria,
closer.
The opportunity
A category with no brand in it
Syrians abroad are already going home. They are already spending on the ground. They are already choosing someone.
Right now that someone is an uncle with a car, a fixer in a Facebook group, or a hotel's WhatsApp number.
Not one of them has a brand. There is no name a family in Berlin can say out loud when a cousin asks who to trust.
That name is the opportunity — and it is still unclaimed. The first one a family can say out loud becomes the default they reach for.
Who actually pays
The person who watches the Reel is not the person who pays
| The audience | The buyer | |
|---|---|---|
| Who | 18–35, second generation, scrolling | A woman, 45–65 — mother, aunt, eldest sister |
| Where | Reels, TikTok | Facebook groups, WhatsApp, email |
| Job | Feels it, tags the family | Books it. Holds the money. Picks the dates. |
She is not booking an adventure. She is buying relief from being the only competent adult in three time zones.
The insight
The real distance was never kilometres
Forty-seven messages in the family WhatsApp group
Three school calendars and two work schedules
Children who understand Arabic but answer in English
An aunt in Dubai coordinating siblings in Germany and Canada
A grandmother's story nobody has recorded
A local family that feels it has already seen everything
The platform
Syria,
closer.
Madafa sells the missing pieces — the named driver, the Family Map, the recorded story — so the aunt stops managing chaos and starts holding a plan.
How every story is built
A creative grammar, not a slogan
DistanceAn empty chair. A missing face in a photograph. A child missing a word.
InterventionOne coordinator. One Family Map. Three choices instead of fifty messages.
ClosenessA shared laugh. A recreated photograph. A story finally recorded.
Next stepChoose three moments · request a Family Map · pay a deposit.
A small team can run this every week — without a creative director in the room for every post.
The campaign system
One platform. Every audience.
Closer to your peopleDiaspora reunion
Closer for your childrenKids, language, belonging
Closer to your storyMemory and archive
Closer to your countryDomestic + Arab tourists
Faces before façades. Hands before drone shots. Specific lived detail instead of generic “beautiful Syria.”
Campaign 01 · direct response
The Aunt Who Books
Split screen. Left: a chaotic arrival hall. Right: the same hall, and a man in a pressed shirt beside a clean car — with his name, his photo, and the time he arrived: 40 minutes before the flight landed.
“You'll get his name and his photo three days before you fly. He'll be there before you land. That's the whole promise.”
Campaign 02 · built to spread
Make Them Miss You Less
A 60-second film is admirable. A 12-second template is contagious.
A kid fumbles an Arabic phrase in a kitchen abroad. Hard cut. Same kid, a courtyard in Syria — he nails it, and the family erupts.
12 diaspora creators post it inside the same 48 hours. A format seeded simultaneously reads as a trend; drip-fed, it reads as advertising.
The content engine
One shoot. A month of material.
Every travel brand runs out of content long before it runs out of ideas. We solve it with production engineering, not heroics.
What a single shoot yields
A hero film
A run of vertical cut-downs
Graded stills, colour-matched
“Proof” clips — the driver, the coordinator, the car
Audio moments
Behind-the-scenes
A steady shoot rhythm keeps the whole system always-on — with material banked in reserve.
What we'd actually make
Not a mood board — a month you can shoot
| Format | The idea | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Reel · direct | The Aunt Who Books | The driver — name and photo — lands days before the trip |
| Reel · viral | Make Them Miss You Less | A kid fumbles an Arabic word, then nails it in a Damascus courtyard |
| TikTok | A stitchable template | “How long since you last went back?” — and people answer in years |
| Story | The arrival, unedited | From the airport to the courtyard, no cuts |
| Carousel | What the driver does | Step by step, hours before you land |
Five samples only. The full calendar — every hook, caption and posting date — is revealed on signing.
One scenario · built end to end
“Make Them Miss You Less” — the twelve-second one
The hook (first two seconds): a kid in a European kitchen tries to say “tislam eedak” — and stumbles.
DistanceThe word comes out wrong. Grandma laughs warmly on the video call — but the distance is right there.
Hard cutHard cut. Same kid — now in a real Damascus courtyard, ablaq stone behind him.
PayoffHe gets it right — and the whole family erupts, laughing and clapping.
CTAOn screen: “Syria, closer,” then “Let’s plan your trip.”
Why it spreads: twelve seconds, built to be stitched, and the caption is a question — “What’s the word your kids always get wrong in Arabic?” — so the comments write themselves.
From concept to camera
A sample shot list — exactly what we hand the shooter
| # | Shot | What happens in frame | Camera & sound |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Close · the face | The kid tries the word, lips stumbling | Static, window light, music starts |
| 2 | Insert · the screen | Grandma on the video call, laughing warmly | Phone held inside the frame |
| 3 | The cut | Hard cut — same kid, a Damascus courtyard | Whip-pan transition |
| 4 | Establishing | The courtyard, ablaq stone, warm late light | Static or slow push-in |
| 5 | Medium · the family | The kid gets it right, the family erupts | Handheld, following the reaction |
| 6 | Close · the reaction | Grandma’s face the moment she hears it right | Tight, shallow focus |
| 7 | End · text | “Syria, closer,” the CTA, the Madafa mark | Added in the edit |
The full list — lighting, durations, sound and coverage — goes to the shooter on signing.
Channel architecture
Facebook is the buyer's home. WhatsApp is the cash register.
The one channel that spans both. Gulf and second-generation Europe live here — and so does urban Syria, in real numbers. Reach, emotion, sharing, tagging the parents. TikTok matters for the diaspora, barely at all at home.
The CRM, the storefront and the checkout. Every asset ends in a click-to-WhatsApp link that tells us which campaign sent it.
Inside Syria the order is Facebook first, Instagram a real second, TikTok barely at all — while in the diaspora Instagram and TikTok carry everything. So Instagram is the one channel that works on both sides, in two different registers. The connection is slow, too, so we ship light, burn in subtitles, and keep WhatsApp files small enough to actually forward. A file that won't forward is a dead asset.
The campaign portfolio
Four campaigns. Four different jobs.
| Campaign | Job | Runs | How we judge it |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Aunt Who Books | Direct response — this one books trips | Always-on · hard push in the weeks before each peak | Enquiries, and how many become real conversations |
| Make Them Miss You Less | Organic reach — the viral engine | Seeded bursts · Ramadan, Eid, back-to-school | How far it travels without us paying for it |
| Sayfiyeh — the summer return | Seasonal peak — fills the summer | Booked in spring for the summer | Demand arriving inside the season window |
| Closer to Your Story | Retention & referral — memory products | Winter gifting · always-on | Whether past guests come back and bring others |
One is built to be shared. One is built to sell. One fills the calendar's biggest month. One brings them back.
Scope of work
What lands every month
Content — the engine
A regular shoot rhythm
A full month of finished assets: hero films, vertical cut-downs, graded stills, proof clips, audio moments and behind-the-scenes
Every asset delivered in both Arabic and English, subtitled, WhatsApp-sized
Publishing & community
Daily publishing across feed, Reels, Stories, long-form and email
Daily comment + DM response in Arabic and English
Facebook Groups programme — a steady, useful presence in the target groups
Paid media
Campaign build, audience construction, continuous creative testing, daily optimisation, pacing across markets, weekly kill-and-scale decisions
Funnel & conversion
WhatsApp templates and flows maintained · lead scoring · response-time monitoring · landing pages per campaign · ongoing SEO articles · CRO on the booking path
Plus: creator programme management · weekly reporting · monthly strategy review.
A month, at a glance
The content calendar
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri–Sat | Sun | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| W1 | Brand film | FB Groups round | Meet the coordinator | Reel — courtyard, dusk | Stories: live trip proof | YouTube: reunion film |
| W2 | Aunt Who Books hero | WhatsApp broadcast | Carousel: the driver’s day | Reel — first Arabic word | Stories: behind the scenes | FB post: how a trip works |
| W3 | Miss You Less hero | Group Q&A | Proof: vehicle & route | TikTok — food macro | Stories: the arrival | Email: the loose ends |
| W4 | Customer story | UGC repost round | FAQ: papers & docs | Reel — the door | Stories: family week | Sayfiyeh early-bird opens |
Fri–Sat is Stories only — live operational proof from real trips. Thursday is the reach slot: the strongest window before the weekend.
Social, channel by channel
Different audience, different job
| Channel | Who it reaches | What we post | Rhythm |
|---|---|---|---|
| Facebook Page + Groups | The buyer — mothers and aunts in Europe · domestic Syrians | Long native video, real departure albums, answers, customer posts | Daily presence, active in the groups |
| Gulf diaspora · second generation · urban Syria | Reels, carousels, Stories, Highlights as the trust wall | Reels and Stories, most days | |
| TikTok | Second gen · discovery (diaspora only) | The stitchable template, food, kids, raw arrivals | A few a week |
| Everyone who converts | Status, Channel broadcasts, the booked-family community | Daily Status, a weekly broadcast | |
| YouTube | Europe + North America, deep trust | The full family films, long-form | A flagship film each month |
| US / Canada especially | Documented, practical, the Arrival Plan | A weekly note |
Paid media
You cannot advertise into Syria. So we don't.
The platforms will not let anyone target the country. Every competitor hits the same wall — and most simply stop there.
We go where the audience actually lives: the diaspora, in their own cities — Berlin, Stockholm, Dubai, Toronto, Detroit.
And the sharpest targeting signal is not geography — it is language.
Reaching Arabic-speaking households in Germany works far better than chasing people who once clicked something about Syria. We start in one market, prove the creative, and only then widen.
Measurement
What we watch — and what we ignore
What we report on
Enquiries arriving by campaign · how fast they were answered · which creative produced conversations · which audiences and markets respond · what we killed and what we scaled.
What we refuse to celebrate
Follower counts. Impressions. Likes on a pretty skyline. None of them can be traced to a real conversation with a real family.
Our job is to fill your inbox with the right conversations. What those conversations are worth, and what you charge for them, is your business — not our promise to make.
How you'll know it's working
Reporting, and the hard part
Weekly — one page
What ran, what worked, what we changed. No slides, no theatre.
Monthly — the review
Creative performance, audience learnings, next month's plan, and the one decision we need from you.
The honest difficulty: This market closes in WhatsApp — which is a private room we cannot see into. Most agencies quietly ignore this and report on clicks instead. We build the trail properly:
Coded linksA different opening message per campaign — so the first line tells us where they came from
Landing pagesOne per campaign, so nothing is lost at the handoff
The human ask“How did you hear about us?” — in conversation, never on a form
Closing the loopYou tell us which enquiries became real, and the targeting learns from it
Who does the work
The team on your brand
Creative director
The platform, the campaigns, and the standard everything is held to.
Producer + shooter
On the ground, with real families, on real trips.
Editor / motion
Turns each shoot into a month of material.
Arabic + English writer
Native Shami dialect — non-negotiable. Translated Arabic is spotted instantly, and it costs you trust.
Media buyer
Daily hands on the campaigns, testing and shifting.
Community manager
In the groups and the DMs every day, in both languages.
Six specialists, none of them learning on your brand.
The funnel
Four rules that move the number
- Reply within 4 hours — in her evening. She is free 20:00–23:00 in Europe, after maghrib in the Gulf. A reply at 10 a.m. her time is a reply to nobody.
- The first voice is a woman. Conversion drops when the first human is a young male guide. She is trusting you with her parents and her children.
- Send a voice note, not a brochure. A voice note is a relationship. A PDF is a vendor.
- Name the human. “Your coordinator is Rana” beats “our team” every single time.
Done properly, every time. That is the whole edge — and it is the part almost everyone skips.
Discipline
What we won't do
- No VR, no 360°, no AI concierge. They demo beautifully and do not survive a mid-range Android on hotel wifi.
- No six-market launch. One market, proven properly, then widen. Spreading thin is the most common way this fails.
- No stock imagery. A trust brand cannot be built on pictures of somebody else's family.
Every one of these is somewhere an agency could look busier — and every one would weaken the brand.
Why the app waits
A memory network with no families in it is a dead app
Its whole value is the origin graph — two families from the same village finding each other's photographs. Until there are real families inside it, there is no graph.
The customer base is a precondition for the app, not an outcome of it.
Deferring it costs us money. We are recommending it anyway.
Year two · the moat
Diwan — the family archive that travels
A diwan is both an anthology and the room where the family gathers. The product is exactly both.
The traveller opens a Closer Room. Absentees join by WhatsApp — no install. They request a place: “go past the school,” “is the fig tree still there?” Those arrive as mission cards.
Every trip quietly introduces the brand to the relatives who weren't there.
The first 90 days
What happens, and what we need
| Window | We do | You have |
|---|---|---|
| Days 1–30 | Brand identity · channels built · WhatsApp funnel · first production shoot | A brand that exists, and a library of material to run on |
| Days 31–60 | Website live · first campaign in market · Facebook Groups programme · creators briefed | Enquiries arriving, and early signal on what the audience responds to |
| Days 61–90 | Brand film · viral seeding · scale what worked · brief a second market only on real signal · SEO begins | A repeatable way to be found and chosen |
What we need from you: access to real families and real trips · someone who answers WhatsApp quickly · a named coordinator as first contact · creative decisions within 48 hours.
The window
Someone is about to become the name families trust
The people are already travelling. The stories are already happening. No brand has earned that trust yet — the name is still open.
We would like it to be you.
The identity · the wordmark
One word, two scripts
madafa
madafaPrimary · light
madafaReversed · dark
madafaOne-colour
dApp mark
Why the mark works
A ض, hiding in plain sight
Madafa · مَضافة is the room a Syrian house keeps ready for guests. The name is the promise.
The wordmark reads madafa in Latin — but the centre letter, the red d, is the Arabic ض (ḍād): the ḍ of Maḍāfa. One glyph, both scripts.
d
The apricot dot is the tell — the ḍād's dot, and the light a home leaves on for someone expected.
The palette · Pomegranate Relay
Six colours, locked
Mineral#E7EEEBA soft tint — panels and quiet fills.
Petrol#132D31Ink — copy, rules and dark fields.
Pomegranate#C8324DThe signal — one action per view, never decoration.
Apricot#F08A4BHuman warmth — and the dot on the mark.
Sea glass#A6C3BEA cool tint — panels and calm accents.
Paper#FFFFFFThe ground — every light surface. High contrast, reversed text.
Locked. Exact hex, every time — no mixing, no improvising.
Typography
Alexandria & Plex Mono
Display · Alexandria — 800
madafa
Syria, closer.
Every headline and the wordmark. Tight tracking, heavy weight — one idea per line.
Labels · IBM Plex Mono
THE CAMPAIGN SYSTEM
kickers · captions
#C8324D · technical notes
the small, precise voice
Two faces, two jobs: Alexandria speaks; Plex Mono labels.
The next step
You’re
expected.
You have the argument, the campaigns, and the first ninety days. What we need next is your market, your coordinator’s name, and a date for the first shoot.
madafaSyria, closer — you’re expected.