Designing for Gen Z in Saudi Arabia: Lessons from a Pizza Roll
What the Al Tazaj Crispy Roll campaigns taught me about earning two seconds of attention.
Omar FawziSenior Art Director, Riyadh · 
When Al Tazaj launched its Crispy Roll Pizza, the audience was clear: young, highly digital Saudis who scroll fast and skip anything that looks like an advert. I led the creative direction for two campaigns through PCG Holding: "The Roll That Stopped the Scroll" and "Crisp", an original character built for social and outdoor.
The first second is the whole brief
On short-form platforms you do not have a headline, a body copy and a call to action. You have one frame. We designed every piece so the product and the joke landed in the first second, with sound off. If it needed explaining, it was cut.
Speak the platform's language, not the brand manual's
Gen Z can spot a corporate post instantly. We kept the brand recognisable through colour and product, but let the format, pacing and humour belong to the platform. The guidelines protected the brand; they did not dictate the tone of every video.
A character gives people something to share
With "Crisp" we created a character instead of another product shot. A character can react to trends, appear on a billboard and star in a fifteen-second video without feeling like an advert. It turns a product into something people talk about.
AI made production faster, not the ideas
We used AI-assisted visual production to explore and produce more variations quickly. The ideas, the humour and the final judgement stayed human. AI is excellent at the hundredth version; it still needs a person to know which one is right.
Lessons for any brand talking to young Saudis
- Win the first second, with sound off.
- Keep the brand in the colour and the product, not in the stiffness.
- Build assets people want to share, such as a character, a line or a format.
- Use AI to multiply options, and people to choose.
Young audiences are not hard to reach. They are hard to fool. Campaigns that respect their time and humour are the ones they stop for.