◈ Koinz — Audience & character study · KSA
Meet Yazeed —
the face of a market.
يزيد
Koinz didn't ask us for a mascot. They asked us to find the face of a market — the 19-year-old in Al-Khobar who orders, collects and redeems. So we ran the study, then gave it a face.
SegmentSaudi Gen Z
HomeAl-Khobar · الشرقية
BehaviourOrder · Collect · Redeem
A mascot decorates.
A persona decides.
Koinz — the first social pickup food app in Saudi Arabia and the wider MENA region — was scaling fast into the Kingdom. It didn't need another cute character. It needed a single, human reference point every designer, marketer and product lead could align to: who exactly are we talking to?
Every growth team eventually hits the same wall. The data says the audience is “young, urban, digital, Saudi.” True — and useless the moment you have to write a push notification, choose a food shot, or script a fifteen-second reel. An average has no personality, and you can't design for an average.
So Monzology proposed a different deliverable. Instead of illustrating a brand pet, we would run an audience study and compress its findings into one person — a persona real enough to argue with. Give the numbers a name, a neighbourhood, a football team and a pair of glasses, and the whole company starts designing for him instead of for a spreadsheet.
That person is Yazeed. Every detail — from his age to the colour of his frames — is an argument backed by market evidence. What follows is the evidence first, and the face it produced.
The Kingdom Yazeed lives in
Four numbers explain why Saudi Arabia is the single most important battleground for a food-loyalty app — and why the customer at the centre of it is almost certainly young.
A young kingdom
Where his money goes
A market growing 2.8× in six years, where 63% of people are under 30 and 99% are online. The average customer isn't a household — he's a teenager with a phone.
How his generation eats
Eating out in Saudi Arabia isn't an occasion — it's a default. And for the under-25s, “eating out” increasingly means ordering in.
Eating-out behaviour
Loyalty is the lever
Peer-led
Gen Z decisions are shaped by friends and feeds far more than by nutrition labels. Points you can share with friends aren't a feature — they're the whole social loop.
Taste & price first
60.6% of Gen Z pick food primarily by taste; price is the next filter. A reward that shaves the bill speaks his language directly.
Phone-native
He never knew a pre-smartphone Saudi Arabia. Ordering, collecting points and redeeming rewards all happen in one thumb-driven session.
The whole segment, in one person
We compressed the study into a single individual — specific enough to be useful, representative enough to stand for millions.
Every attribute is a decision from the study. He's 19 because the market skews under-30. He's from the Eastern Province because Koinz's pickup network runs deep in Khobar–Dammam. His frames are Koinz orange because the persona has to carry the brand on his face.
The research behind the look
Before a single line was drawn, we assembled the reference that makes Yazeed read as authentically Saudi rather than a generic “young man.” His complexion was matched to a documented Arabian skin-tone range — not guessed. His hair, styling and eyewear were pulled from how Eastern-Province Gen Z actually present today.
The result is a persona a Saudi user recognises in half a second: that's someone I know — that could be me.
Documented Arabian skin-tone reference — keeping the illustration true to the audience.
The brand system Yazeed had to live inside — and wear.
Turning a study into a stare
Insight is worthless until it's on the screen. This is the pipeline that carried Yazeed from a demographic brief to a finished, brand-ready character.
Drag to reveal — the study becoming a face.
Define the brief
The study, distilled to one page: name, age, birthplace and behaviour — the non-negotiables every sketch had to honour.
Sketch the face
Line explorations to find a face that reads 19, confident and approachable — the register the brand wanted.
Explore variants
Eight head studies — hair, styling, features — plus a matched complexion range, pressure-testing which version felt most “Khobar today.”
Render & brand
Full-colour finish, Koinz-orange frames locked in — ready to deploy on white, orange or purple across every touchpoint.
Tap to switch — same person, two personalities.
Realistic enough to trust, playful enough to love
A persona has to flex. For strategy decks and premium campaigns, Yazeed holds a grounded, semi-realistic finish. For in-app moments, stickers, loyalty celebrations and social — where Koinz is at its most fun — he snaps into a bright, mascot-friendly style.
Same face, same person, same market truth — dialled up or down to match the moment. That range is what lets a single character carry an entire brand.
What a face buys a brand
A persona isn't an illustration you file away. It's an operating tool three teams use every day.
Alignment
Product, marketing and content stop arguing about “the user” in the abstract. They ask one question — would Yazeed tap this? — and it settles the debate.
Consistency
Every campaign, notification and food shot now points at the same person. The brand feels coherent because it's literally speaking to one recognisable Saudi face.
Localisation
Yazeed makes an Egypt-born app feel unmistakably Saudi — down to his city and his team — the trust an expanding brand needs in the Kingdom.
The scale we designed for
This wasn't a doodle for a startup. Yazeed was built to front a platform already operating at serious scale across the region.
An illustrated-character engagement, start to finish
Commissioned under a formal Illustrated Character Creation agreement in November 2024 and delivered over a 90-day schedule.
- Ran the audience & market study — turned Saudi F&B, demographic and loyalty data into one clear target.
- Built the data-driven persona — compressed the whole segment into Yazeed: city, behaviour, psychographics.
- Designed the character system — concept, exploration and a final character in two registers (realistic + mascot).
- Delivered brand-ready artwork — Koinz-aligned and set to run across app, social, packaging and campaigns.
- 01Audience & market study
- 02Data-driven persona profile
- 03Character concept & sketches
- 04Feature & style exploration
- 05Final full-colour character
- 06Two registers (realistic + mascot)
- 07Brand-system alignment
- 08Touchpoint-ready artwork
Every number is traceable
Market figures come from published third-party research; persona attributes come from Monzology's study and the signed brief. Nothing here is estimated.
- Koinz facts, funding & scale — MENAbytes, Crunchbase, App Store (KSA).
- “First social pickup food app in KSA & MENA” — Koinz × Monzology partnership announcement (2025).
- Saudi online food-ordering & delivery, US$2.98B (2024) → US$8.22B (2030), 18.42% CAGR — ResearchAndMarkets via BusinessWire, 2025.
- Saudi loyalty-programs market, US$1.04B (2023) → US$1.59B (2028), 8.5% CAGR — GlobeNewswire, 2024.
- 63% under 30 (2022 census) — GASTAT via The National; 71% under 35 (2024) — Gulf News.
- Internet 99%, 99.4% mobile — CST Saudi Internet Report 2024; 36.84M users — DataReportal 2024.
- Eating-out frequency & ordering-in — Caterer Middle East; Gen-Z taste-driven choice (60.6%) — NCBI/PMC.
- Persona attributes & engagement terms — Monzology audience study & signed Koinz engagement, Nov 2024.
Let’s give your market
a face, too.
Book a meeting →“I worked with Monzology on a highly creative project where we were looking to create a unique creative outlet for our brand. The team is incredibly talented and creative — but what impressed me most was how helpful and strategic they were throughout the process. It's rare to find a partner who brings both creativity and strategic thinking to the table as Monzology does.
