KUALA LUMPUR - While many car salespersons are creating promotional content in Bahasa Melayu on TikTok, one young man is taking a different route - marketing cars in Arabic, captivating hundreds of thousands of social media users in the process.
With his relaxed delivery and distinctive Arabic pronunciation, the videos created by Muhammad Zainul Arieff Noor Azlan, 27, are not only entertaining but also make viewers pause mid-scroll, thinking that he is reciting prayers or delivering a short sermon.
But what he is doing is introducing the various Proton car models and explaining their features entirely in Arabic, complete with automotive terminology.
Muhammad Zainul Arieff, who works as a sales advisor at the Proton dealership in Setapak, told Bernama the idea of producing such content stemmed from his desire to stand out in the automotive sales industry, where social media has become a key marketing platform.
He added that the Malay-language videos he initially produced failed to gain much traction, prompting him to search for a more creative way to build his identity on TikTok.
"When I first started working in Proton about a month ago, I created the same kind of content as everyone else. But then I thought, if everyone is producing similar videos, how will people remember me?
"My account was still new, so I needed something that could make people stop scrolling and pay attention. That’s when I decided to try speaking in Arabic, even though I’m not entirely fluent and had to relearn some vocabulary I had not used for years,” said Muhammad Zainul Arieff, who pursued his studies at Darul Musthofa, an Islamic studies institution in Yemen.
The experiment proved successful, with his first Arabic-language video receiving an unexpectedly enthusiastic response.
"I was shocked by the number of notifications coming in (after uploading my first Arabic video). That’s when I realised this uniqueness was something people enjoyed,” he said, adding that some of his videos have surpassed 500,000 views.
He said many social media users initially did not realise he was promoting cars because they could not understand the language used in the videos.
Some viewers even requested Malay subtitles to better understand the content and the automotive terms he was using.
Recognising this, Muhammad Zainul Arieff began producing more videos with Malay translations while introducing Arabic automotive vocabulary in a casual and easy-to-understand way. Among the terms he has translated into Arabic are sport rim, dashboard and engine bonnet.
After returning from Yemen in 2021, he worked as an al-Quran teacher, Grab driver, barista and live-stream host before eventually entering the automotive sales industry.
He said those job experiences helped build his confidence and made him more open to trying new things, including creating social media content independently using only a tripod and a smartphone.
Although he has only been with Proton for about a month, the creative approach is already paying off, with his TikTok content attracting potential customers who contact him for more information about the cars. - BERNAMA