Archives




2022 | |

TAPtastic Way To Winning Rewards and Hearts

Advertiser: Maybank
Brand: MAE
Creative Agency: N/A
Credits: Winnie Chen-Head - iProspect Malaysia, Partner, Head of iProspect Ajith Kumar - iProspect Malaysia, Business Director Ezawati Zolkafle - iProspect Malaysia, Planning Manager Bryan Foon - iProspect Malaysia, Planner

Objective & Challenge
Maybank’s MAE wanted to drive daily user acquisition with its newly launched TAPtastic in app game and needed to create big impact in the 18 to 44 age group to do so, the objectives set were: 1. TAPtastic: Driving increase in app daily usage, acquisition and being top of mind. 2. Gamification to drive desired behaviour: Simple, yet effective game; Little effort required simply launch app daily to stand to win. 3. Drive consistent behaviour throughout the full 72 days: Daily rewards for daily logins; Bigger rewards i.e. car for transaction related services.

Insight & Strategy
There were 2 driving factors behind the “TAPtastic” campaign: 1) Decline in daily user acquisition 2) Lack of top of mind awareness. Consumers became increasingly value driven with having a functional relationship with the brand as the competitors were aggressive in terms of benefits such as cash back, discounts & promos. This led to us to develop the campaign which focused on interacting with the user beyond the value driven offers & instead offer engaging connection based communication that would move the needle away from functional. We went in 100% digital to capture the interaction with the brand & we explored further beyond hygiene platforms. Appreciating the power of smart audience planning and activation through programmatic inventory, we tapped into a growing segment of gaming audience. Specifically the larger pool of casual gamers through implementation of impactful and effective gaming inventory. We needed to build stronger affinity in long form content platforms that will allow us to deliver our relevant affinity based communication messaging. Hence, we partnered with publishers with highly engaged lifestyle based audiences on Says, TRavel with foodie, Eat pray love, Daily makan Our goal is to drive increased affinity and engagement beyond the functional, transactional messaging and ad formats commonly seen in the category.

Execution
To drive interactivity with the brand, our communications approach led us to launch mini games in the form of puzzles, guess the prize, riddles, brain teasers etc. on digital platforms. This entire campaign ran from Deepavali festive period all the way to New Year celebrations. At every important calendar dates, the content was contextualised to fit the theme. For example, for Deepavali, our content was about ‘Finding The Difference Between 2 Kolams’ and ‘Indian Movie Lyrics’. For Christmas ‘Count the Ornaments on the Christmas Tree’ and ‘Guess the Present’. For New Year celebration, we introduced ‘Final Countdown Before New Year’. In the first month, the team executed ‘MAE Everywhere’ strategy aimed to maximise SOV across digital ecosystem, featuring YouTube Masthead, Premium Placement in programmatic, social feed, Video Reach, Video Discovery & Google Display Network (GDN) ads to drive maximum reach at the highest cost efficiency possible. The next 2 months, we utilised a ‘MAE Recall’ strategy to encourage audience to launch MAE App to win prizes with over 40 different sizes across all placements with higher Frequency, and content in languages to ensure we reach out to BM & English speaking audiences.

Effectiveness
Across multiple platforms and formats, the campaign garnered an impressive 237 million impressions (+40% of KPI), reaching out to 48 million audiences and earning 2.5 million video views with high VTR 78% (Benchmark 15%), beating initial projections overall. An uplift of +41% in Daily Active Users, +55% new customers vs precampaign (3x of the original target). Within 1 month, Maybank doubled their reach from 32% to 66% of 1844 age group in Malaysia. With the format mix, the campaign drove an all time high in search interest for the MAE app. Oct to Nov Searches increased 3x of average MAE searches & +21% lift in Ad Recall.

2022 | |

Finding Light in a Dark Space Through Marketplace Intelligence

Advertiser: Abbott Malaysia
Brand: Abbott Nutrition
Creative Agency: N/A
Credits: Fuziatul Syafawani Fatkhurrozi - iProspect Malaysia, Performance Marketing Specialist Filip Adamski - iProspect Malaysia, Digital Director Sophia Ting - iProspect Malaysia, Account Manager Cyrus Yeoh - iProspect Malaysia, Account Director Carissa Morais - iProspect Malaysia, Account Manager Megat Iskandar Shahriman - iProspect Malaysia, Account Executive

Objective & Challenge
Most brands on ECommerce Marketplaces face the biggest challenge of having little to no visibility into performance and benchmarks of their Shop in Shop versus the competitions in their category. Abbott, the leader in infant and adult nutrition struggles with the same challenge of limited view on comparing their own brands with competitors’ product availability, prices, promotions, ratings & reviews, content, and search rankings for Shopee and Lazada. The Marketplace platforms are strict on not sharing these category and its players insights on the traffic and performance of the flagship stores with their brand partners. This leaves Abbott with the task of looking for external tools and technology solutions to help them plan their presence and eCommerce Marketplace strategy better.

Insight & Strategy
Due to COVID19 pandemic, purchasing behaviours have shifted and users turned to ecommerce channels and marketplaces for their daily shopping with over 46% increase in online shopping behaviour, that has sustained throughout the last 2 years of sporadic lockdowns. Lots of brands in the same category started to increase their investment in paid media to grow their digital stores traffic and build awareness about their ecommerce presence to capture conversion that has now shifted online. Digital advertising space overnight become overwhelmed with ads promoting key marketplace events and brand promotions. However, increasing paid media investment at its own did not result in proportional growth in Gross Merchandise Value (GMV). Increased competition from retailers resulted in declining conversion rates and price wars. In order to understand ecommerce ecosystem holistically, brands needed intelligence on key marketplaces itself. Pricing strategies, competitors, stocks availability, promotions, reviews management, search engine optimisation, UX and UI design, conversion rates became key differentiators when competing in the marketplace space and brands needed to expand beyond paid media only strategy. However it can be very difficult getting the right data from marketplaces to increase store performance.

Execution
In the time when all brands advertising and media focus shifted to ecommerce and marketplaces, we had to get ahead of competition and look at the ecosystem holistically not only from media point of view. Implementing our proprietary Marketplace Intelligence tool helped us scale up our Digital Commerce Performance. With this intelligence tool, we were able to analyse and optimise our store discovery and conversion across 6 key areas: 1. Search Rank Tracking 2. Product Page Quality Score 3. Keyword Research 4. A/B testing 5. Competitor Store Intelligence 6. Competitor Product Intelligence We have gained valuable insight into our own, competitors’ and retailers’ performance and pricing strategies. We were able to make decision on how to optimize our Shops both onsite and offsite for better performance and differentiate from competitors and retailers. Leveraging valuable first, second and third party data using various helped us in creating and implementing 360 degree marketplace strategy across owned, earned and paid media that helped us win in always on and tactical campaigns.

Effectiveness
Across both marketplace and all brands: 1. We achieved 3 digit growth in total shop visits H1 2021 vs the same period previous year. 2. Both official Marketplace brand stores’ revenue grew double digit in H1 2021, while we managed to maintain similar levels of paid media expenditure. 3. All other perforce metrics and performance indicators (avg. basket size, ROAS, traffic, etc) improved in the first half of 2021 vs the same period previous year, making H1 2021 the performing period for ecommerce to date. 4. Our success was also confirmed when comparing our performance vs key competitors. Our Brands managed to be listed in top 3 positions during all key sales campaigns across Formula Milk and Groceries category.

2022 | |

Work It, Girl: The Rising Spark of Media

Advertiser: -
Brand: -
Creative Agency: -
Credits: Priya Karthik - Executive, Media Planning, iProspect Malaysia

Background
Proud of her humble beginnings, Priya was always self determined and developed a “can do” attitude at a tender age, when she realized that she cannot change her circumstances till she is challenged to change it herself. Witnessing countless setbacks and failures from childhood, Priya was always sure about one thing that education and learning was everything that she needed to succeed and pursue her dream. With her warm altruistic personality profile, she was nominated as one of the 8 leaders for the first cohort of Future Leadership programme. It is notable that she stood by her decision to be part of the initiative to drive a happy work culture, thus creating and facilitating a healthy work environment in the agency. As a media planner, servicing Levi’s Malaysia and Singapore, she has shown immense desire to lead, be the change in every step taken and transcend the boundaries. As much as her favourite phrase is “I love my job too much”, her other love lies deeply in fine arts. On the balancing act, Priya is a seasoned classical dancer for 20 years, having performed for numerous charity drives. Holding on to her passion for fine arts, she has now expanded her wings to Odissi and Ballet as she believes one should never stop learning.

What’s Special about You & Key Achievements
When Priya was onboarded to the Levi’s account, a significant change that she brought to the account internally is her kind, understanding and eagerness to learn personality. Turning to her biggest strength is her ability to stay resilient despite the challenges she endures at work and how she intercepts challenges with full optimism, always. During the first few weeks of onboarding into the account, despite having little knowledge on media planning, she stayed resilient, actively listened and absorbed feedbacks. In simple terms, there is no turning back when it comes to Priya, everything is entirely henceforth. Gillian Chan the Director of Client Leadership quotes Priya is someone who you can always count on as she has this incredible attitude of taking the ‘IM’ out of ‘Impossible’ and turns it into ‘PRO’ at solving ‘PROblems’! As she progressed over the months, she was assigned the responsibility of handling Dockers along major brand launches under Levi’s such as Levi’s 501 Originals, Levi’s EOSS, Holiday and Levi’s Ramadan, where she applied media planning strategy and learnings which resulted to positive campaign delivery and success. Above all, she was always able to see the positive side of people and encourage teammates to maintain staying calm and composed during critical situations, a commendable act. For instance, during incidents such as major campaign overspends or underspends or even when conflicts occur within multiple parties, she resolves them with notable patience and admirable tact. She respects everyone without prejudice, takes initiatives to enhance relationship among colleagues thus elevating the spirits of those around her. Aside from her day to day task, she also dedicates her time in many of the initiatives parked under the Future Leadership Program, inclusive of executing a fireside chat with aspiring women leaders from the industry and initiating a buddy onboarding program.

Leadership Skills
As a potential leader, Priya believes in bringing forward a compassionate, empathetic yet thoughtful approach to her leadership style as she believes “you don’t have to be in a position of influence, to influence”. In addition, Priya’s relational skills are exceptional – her deep listening, effective assertion, and self awareness are the skills to influence the system around her in an authentic way, with which she explores many opportunities to overcome daily challenges. A very good example is when leading campaigns, she has showed excellent leadership style, internally. As a result, many adored her working style that they gained trust and respect for her. Moving on, when she was onboarded to lead the Singapore Levi’s account, there was an immediate significant change in a healthy work culture among agencies which has led to increase in productivity and trust among multiple parties. Upon onboarding, she promptly connected with all agencies to understand their concerns and ways to accelerate the account’s performance. Therefore, within days, she was able to collate their feedbacks. Notwithstanding, Priya has audited the account and identify gaps and quickly suggested ways to move forward as a capable media planner. Therefore, internally there was an instant relieve on the account progress. A positive one. Everyone saw her as a strong aspiring gatekeeper with immense dedication to transform the account and accelerate the progress. Witnessing the recent change that happened to the Singapore account, Tony the Client Director from Singapore quoted “There was a moment when we needed her to step into a vacated role and she took it without questioning, picked up the gaps with gusto, explaining the moving pieces that has been sidelined, and has given the role and account a new life!” Priya an effective assertive leader, believes in honesty and transparency in expressing her opinions and feelings. This makes her a natural leader.

2022 | |

Gamechanger in Innovation Towards Transformation

Advertiser: -
Brand: -
Creative Agency: -
Credits: Winnie Chen - Partner, Head of Product & Growth

Background
Winnie is the real tangible example of what happens when passion meets grit. She has played a game changer role in multiple role across organizations not just transforming the businesses but also the people she has worked with. She is the glue that binds passionate people within high performance teams. She leads SPG for the agency group – Strategy, Product and Growth. This has been able to give her the perfect platform to exercise her strategy and people leadership skills. Clients come to her for trusted advice and that makes her an invaluable contributor to the marketing industry. Her ability to switch between long term future-proof Digital Transformation discussions, to strategic thinking in Comms Planning, to brainstorming innovations with partners for client campaigns, to managing daily operational problem-solving scenarios, to leading almost all new business pitches for the agency is one of her key strengths. In less than a year with the agency, Winnie led a number of initiatives from hard business KPIs to softer people metrics. – Launching agency-wide products across E-Commerce and Influencer Marketing between just 2 internal stakeholders – Leading >10 new business pitches with some key Global and regional wins and successfully retained 5 non-competitive key account renewals amidst high team attrition – Streamlining and growing agency’s tools and capabilities previously managed by multiple or no stakeholders

What’s Special about You & Key Achievements
Winnie loves building new things, perfect recipe for her role in Product & Growth. While the industry focuses on short term tactical wins through incremental optimisation, she believes in growth planning for disruptions in a sustainable tomorrow. Balancing the art of Marketing with the science of data and insights, she accelerated development of the agency’s product roadmap: – Accelerating local adoption of Global products across gaming, digital transformation identity solutions, attention economy and sustainability offerings – Build and launch total E-Commerce offering with products from Marketplace Optimisation to LiveCommerce solutions to help start, scale and grow client’s E-Commerce stream accelerated with the Covid pandemic – Solving client’s perpetual challenges of data-driven insights in selection and measurement of influencer engagement combining both art and science of working with KOLs – Drive client conversations to unlock potential for Digital and Data transformation in preparation for the cookie-less future, unlocking new projects beyond the Media scope, and building a strong pipeline to achieve scale to soon launch a new CXM Consulting business pillar Not being put down by the challenges of the pandemic years, she has truly revolutionised businesses when agility and perseverance was most needed. Winnie has managed to achieve key wins in under a year with the agency: – Product – launched >5 local products in 6 months expanding local expertise and capabilities for existing and new clients – Profit – secured >5 client projects beyond Media buying scope in Strategy & Consulting, diversifying revenue opportunities for the agency network – Profile – Led and secured 2 new business wins in Q1 2022 thus far, one Global and one regional worth >RM20m in billings

Leadership Skills
Winnie is highly passionate and thrives in perfecting her craft. She’s a ringleader when taking on #1 roles in bringing order to chaos, and delivers results in the #2 seat when operationalizing big visions of the organization. As an INFJ personality, she has high EQ to unlock motivators in people internally and externally: – People Management She dedicates 1on1 time with each team members regularly to listen and discuss goals, challenges and more. This led to some restructure for better casting of people to the accounts they work on. This proved rewarding with improved employee satisfaction scores, improved individual performance ratings, off-cycle promotions and unprecedented bonus for >60% of the team members this year, the first in 4 years! – Extreme Ownership Winnie believes in leadership by example and never shies from rolling up her sleeves to work alongside her team. In many of the pitches she led, she guides the team with precise directions and examples, builds slides in pitch decks way into the night and weekends with the team, and even help coach individuals in pitch strategies and presentations. This resulted in key Global and Regional wins that she led personally, worth >RM20m in billings in the past 3 months alone. – Coaching One of her direct reports in Strategy completed her probation period in half the time, with a “Very Strong” performance rating. She’s due for an unprecedented increment and is now enrolled in a Next Gen Leadership program to fast track her growth.