Promotion for Neom, the upwards of $500 billion, 10,000-square-mile region under construction in Saudi Arabia, has always been a little off. There are the videos touting Neom’s 105-mile-long city, The Line; and the reality-defying renderings showing off a litany of luxury spaces including the golf resort Gidori. Now, though, it seems like Neom’s marketing team might be using a tried-and-true tactic to sell the special economic zone as the world’s next great city: MomTok.
A group of influencers (primarily women and mothers) have cropped up on social media to share their lives at compounds within Neom, posting day-in-the-life vlogs that often include dropping their kids off at school, showing luxury shopping hauls, and running errands around the compound. While the videos seemed to be framing life in Neom as aspirational, the strategy has backfired given that the locations shown don’t look anything close to the utopian future that Neom has promised.
Influencer marketing gone awry?
Currently, none of Neom’s many luxury development projects are actually complete, so most of the Neom influencers are posting from Neom Community 1 (NC1) and Neom Community 2 (NC2)—living compounds that appear to be housing for families associated with the massive construction project. The outdoor environment in most of the videos looks comparable to a suburban office development, with rows of near-identical white buildings and small patches of turf in between. One X user compared it to a “low-security prison.” It’s a sterile, desolate-looking settlement that’s a far cry from Neom’s glittering project renderings.
A TikTok from creator Jessica Herman first caught the internet’s attention. Herman is shown walking through the NC1 compound and grabbing dinner with her family at the compound’s dining hall. Many X users were surprised by the lackluster surroundings, likening them to a “Mars colony” and “military base.”
“Is this supposed to convince people to go work out in the desert for a penal colony?” one user asked.
Herman’s account has since been deactivated.
TikToker Aida McPherson, whose husband’s job with Neom is the reason her family lives in NC1, clarifies that the compound is an employee-only “construction camp.” As she wrote in the comments under one video, “One-bedroom cabins/apartments are free, and if you have kids you are eligible for two-bedroom, but you have to pay for two-bedroom accommodation.”
During the writing of this article, McPherson’s account was made private. Other Neom influencer accounts, like @sarasarasid and @ggneom appeared to also go private within the same period. Fast Company reached out to a Neom spokesperson to learn more about the purpose of the compounds, their industrial appearance, and whether the aforementioned Neom TikTok influencer content is sponsored in any way. As of this writing, we have not received a response.
TikToks from @Anna_bel_Saudia, an influencer account that’s still public, include several vlogs of her weekend activities in a Neom camp and day-in-the-life videos documenting her schedule as an office worker. One caption reads, “Not too shabby for a construction site 😍. This is just my personal example. The type of camp and camp facilities depend on your project, employer, and other factors.”
The truth behind the TikToks
Despite the backlash from X users, these videos generally paint life as a Neom employee (or employee’s spouse) as full of amenities and even luxuries. For influencers Herman and McPherson, that includes hauls of designer bags, trips to the local mall, and ultramodern living accommodations.
These carefully curated images are in stark contrast to the reports of myriad wrongdoings committed by Neom’s oversight. In 2022, the human rights organization ALQST published a statement claiming that Saudi Arabia’s Specialized Criminal Court had issued death sentences to three members of the local Howeitat tribe for refusing to comply with forcible eviction mandated by the Neom project. This May, the BBC reported an ex-intelligence officer’s testimony that Saudi authorities were permitted to use lethal force to clear land for Neom construction. According to said officer, one local protester was shot and killed by authorities for refusing to be evicted. And as recently as September 11, the Wall Street Journal published an extensive report documenting instances of corruption, racism, and misogyny among Neom’s top executives, as well as shedding light on the harsh working conditions for Neom construction workers.
Meanwhile, construction on Neom’s most hyped project, The Line, is facing new delays as the massive financial toll of the undertaking begins to set in.
It remains unclear whether Neom’s MomTok influencers were directly commissioned by Neom to produce sponsored content. But either way, the videos serve as a case of influencer marketing gone awry. Pitching what is clearly a hastily constructed pop-up village as a content creator’s paradise was never going to work—nor is it anywhere near enough to drown out discussion and reports of the project’s many alarming issues. Maybe those renderings weren’t so bad after all.