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2021 | |

Malaysia’s First Ever 12-Hour Virtual Beauty Festival

Advertiser: L’Oreal Malaysia
Brand: L’Oreal Luxury
Creative Agency: IDOTYOU
Credits: -

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Objective & Challenge
Prior to the pandemic, more than 95% sales of luxe brands stemmed from offline, but lockdown rules made them untenable and an ordinary digital activation would not excite the luxe shoppers in the same way. We need a breakthrough formula to disrupt the typical mode of live streaming.

Insight & Strategy
Luxe shoppers love beauty events, the joy of browsing through attractive deals, delightful packaging and interacting with experts. Not forgetting the attentive service and personalised consultation, which usually lead to higher impulse purchases and basket value. However, COVID19 has disrupted the joy. While the retail joy shifted from offline to online, we wanted to go further and disrupt the ordinary mode of live streaming which have developed over the COVID19 year. It was a challenge to bring all 8 luxe brands under 1 virtual festival, but the biggest challenge is to make this 12hour virtual festival interesting for people to tune in, to engage with the brands and to ultimately buy the product during the festival. We creatively tied in Facebook live streaming and messenger capabilities to simulate a physical event with impeccable customer service, digitally. An exceptional virtual beauty experience was delivered, featuring celebrities and influencers hosting giveaways and flash sales. We deployed an end to end social commerce and shopper engagement platform within the messenger that allow shoppers to use the brand’s dedicated hashtag to trigger a private conversation on messenger. The customer can opt for self shopping or to interact with a real life beauty advisor personally, place orders and make payment all within the chat. This sped up the conversion process while the purchase intent is high, driven by the live excitements simulated after a physical event. The virtual event offered shoppers curated content mirroring a physical event, in the comfort of their own home while mix modelling of bot and real life advisors gave the assisted joy of physical shopping.

Execution
To bring 8 brands to Facebook live all within 12 hours, audience precision was key to ensure that the awareness of the event is widely spread to the targeted luxe audience. To ensure we were able to reach and recruit high interest audience, we deployed a CRM and CRM LookaLike audience strategy, which have contributed to higher attendance and conversion rate. Other channel consisting of PR content and print titles were also used to boost event awareness beyond Facebook platform. Pre event Activation
• To build the excitement of the festival, we consolidated the voice of all brands into one event hub page 10 days prior to the actual event
• We increased signups to individual brand pages by highlighting the limited time promotions and exciting lineups of KOLs, giveaways, tips, and tutorials during their respective brand show.
• To collected leads for each brand via messenger ads
• Boost PR content and use offline print titles to extend the reach beyond the Facebook platform Event Day
• Drive live stream views via video ads 30 minutes prior to brand’s live session
• Engage audience with flash sales and prizes to stay through the session
• High persuasive content such as crash test, efficacy proof, live demo and consultation are included to deepen brand engagement and drive instant conversion
• Activated social commerce triggering a personalized conversation via Messenger. Customers could then interact with a beauty advisor for a one on one consultation, place orders and follow guided assistance to make payment. PostEvent Retargeting
• Following the event, we deployed different remarketing strategies for purchased users and cart abandoner to drive the effectiveness on conversion.

Effectiveness
The first ever 12hour virtual beauty festival achieved an overwhelming response amidst the pandemic. It has made a feature in Forbes.com and listed as Facebook Business Case Study: Integration of social commerce. Strategic Business Achievement One month’s worth of online sales in 24 hours 5x omni customer penetration vs. YAGO +95% sell out weekoverweek 3x uplift of transactions vs. daily average 6x conversion rate higher than legacy channel Total leads generated at 94% above set target Media achievement: Activated over 15,000 chats Reached 2.6 million people 47,000 live video views 85 times higher engagement (4.28%) vs. global beauty industry standard (0.05%) 12% postengagement rate “Experimenting with new sales formats always requires meticulous planning and planning an allday virtual beauty festival with multiple brands was an incredibly ambitious effort. Thanks to our partners and agencies, we were able to host an outstanding live event that deepened our engagement with our audience and boosted sales. It was a great success!” Eda Lim, Head of Digital and eCommerce, L’Oreal Luxury Malaysia.

2021 | |

AIA Knows When You Are Asleep, AIA Knows When You Are Awake

Advertiser: AIA Malaysia
Brand: AIA Malaysia
Creative Agency: Leo Burnett
Credits: -

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Objective & Challenge
As part of their new brand promise of Healthier, Longer Better Lives, AIA Malaysia shifted its focus to the importance of wellbeing of Malaysians. With media being primarily a push platform, how can we utilize media to improve the well being of Malaysians? Impressions, Clicks, CTR, CPC, Views or View Rate has always been the norm of measurement when it comes to digital advertising. However with significant advancement in digital ad tracking technology, could we go further take a step away from standard digital measurement metrics and use digital media for tangible good? Aside from understanding the key digital media deliverables, we also sought to ad tech tools to measure the digital consumption patterns of the Malaysians online population and hence push them the right messaging to encourage these users to live a Healthier, Longer, Better Lives.

Insight & Strategy
Malaysians are getting more and more Mobile centric with audiences spending at least 6 hours online, up 23% year on year. It is not surprising that mobile has been the last screen they looking at before going to sleep. This heavy reliance on mobile screen time has been well documented in disrupting the sleeping patterns of many around the world . Locally, according to the study by the Malaysian Healthiest Workplace Survey in 2019, 9 out of 10 Malaysians working adult suffering from at least 1 form of sleep disorder or another. With mobile being the device that we are most connected to, we realise that we can reverse engineer our runofthemill 3rd party ad serving technology to monitor Malaysian’s digital activity. By tracking a user’s mobile device ID and digital usage pattern, we can accurately identify users who are consistently sleep deprived by measuring the time between their last and first mobile usage touchpoints, and the amount of ad impressions they have been served throughout the night. Our strategy was to combine the power of ad tracking and programmatic technology to remind audiences to get enough sleep for their next day activity.

Execution
Every time an ad is served from an ad server, it receives a unique bid request from the mobile device. We reversed engineered this to correlate the volume of bid request sent by unique mobile device IDs and mapped that against their activity level. Audiences were analyzed carefully based on their activeness by looking into the bid request from their mobile devices between 11pm 4am (which indicate that they are still active on their mobile during these hours). Using past 3 month’s data, we were able to categorized these users into 3 key segment by looking at the volume of vid request, namely Mild(users that had sent 1 5 times bid request to our DSP), Moderate(users that had sent 5 10 times bid request to our DSP), as well as Severe(users that had sent more than 10 times bid request to our DSP). We also analysed the time difference between their last ad impression and their next ad impression to identify people who have less than the recommended 7 hours of sleep. Programmatically, we were able to upload these device IDs as custom audience segment and hence able to actively reach them. At night, we pushed ads that reminded them to sleep early or that it is time to sleep. The next day, we remarket banners which pulls them to articles that discusses the importance of sleep. Both push and pull approach ensures maximum viewability of campaign.

Effectiveness
As a first of its kind approach, our Sleep Quality Tracker initiative tracked Malaysian’s quality of sleep over a period of 4 weeks, from there we managed to record significant improvements in quality of sleep within the Severe and Moderate groups: A total of 184,208 individuals (28%) from the Severe group had moved from Severe to Moderate. A total of 145,332 individuals (34%) of the Moderate group reported a reduction in digital activities online and a significant decrease in Last Activity Time from an average of 4am to 3am. The Mild audience group also reported to have the highest engagement (12% higher) in our Sleep Banners as compared to the other target groups. On our key campaign page, our traffic to site showed an uplift of 34%, with AIA health product related pages showing a significant traffic increase of over 200% (from 23,000 avg pages views to 73,049 page views) compared to previous AIA Vitality campaigns. Further attribution also showed a positive impact on bottom line by successfully generating up to 2,058 leads (with 500 leads as the initial target set by client) that had been passed to our agents for acquisition purposes. AIA Malaysia’s first of it’s kind experimentation with ad serving technology to track quality of sleep has yielded further interest beyond the Malaysia borders with other AIA market currently exploring the possibility of implementing this in their respective market.

2021 | |

RM 25,000 per second? Sharks, we have a deal!

Advertiser: Alliance Bank
Brand: Alliance Bank
Creative Agency: Invictus Blue Group
Credits: -

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Objective & Challenge
Remember the days when a business proposal required pages of documents? Those days are far gone with modernization. Now, business owners are mainly young, hungry, on the go entrepreneurs. To keep up with fast paced young entrepreneurs that seek instant gratification, connecting with SMEs on familiar, vibrant platforms is vital. The primary objective of BizSmart Challenge 2020 was to drive awareness among young entrepreneurs in a unique manner. Given the vague digital signal to identify SME owners online, the agency’s aim was to stand out in a cluttered space to give SMEs an opportunity to pitch their business in an unconventional manner.

Insight & Strategy
Facebook insights indicate that over 25 million businesses actively use Instagram to market to their target audience, and this number is growing by the day. It is no surprise that Instagram is one of the most rapidly growing social media platforms, especially when engaging with an audience with goldfish attention. Given the shift in business owners mainly being young and on the go entrepreneurs, the strategy was to reach out to them in platforms they are more familiar with in a stand out manner. With the existing strong presence and familiarity of business owners on Instagram, we recreated this space as a business pitch platform for businesses to pitch to their potential Sharks, which would impact their business reach in folds. With that in mind, Malaysia’s first ever 60 seconds Instagram Story Business Pitch was activated. Supporting this activation, we dived deep to identify the pain points and touchpoints of business with less than 5year business operations. Reports on Global Web Index on potential target audience behaviour showed that their main operation was through social channels, which was the most cost efficient platform in connecting with end users where a staggering 98.5% were active on social platforms (mainly on Facebook and Instagram). Article on NST identified that the conversations and pain points of SME business owners were around business coaching, funding, operation and clientele topics which was the essence of the BizSmart Challenge that is to help SMEs. Our strategy going into this was to share what BizSmart Challenge can do to address their pain points, and provide them with an unconventional method to pitch their business to gain the guidance needed to elevate their brand. We wanted to speak their language to reach out to them. So, we emulated the same structure of how a business is run through a condensed three step process of innovation, optimization and systemization.

Execution
With Instagram Story Business Pitch, we kept the mechanism simple as it was created for socialsavvy, young entrepreneurs. All they had to do was pitch their business in 60 seconds via Instagram story: 4x Instagram stories answering the key questions of “What is the business about?”, “How are you different from your competitors?”, “What inspired you to start your business?” and “What is your business plan for the next 3 years?” with the hashtag #BizSmartChallenge2020 for tracking on submission. In the spirit of business coaching even prior to joining as a BizSmart contestant, we rolled out how to join videos and static assets across all digital platforms where we targeted potential audience that were interested in entrepreneurship, business operation, business strategy, finance, crowdfunding, business coaching, SME funding which had a potential audience pool of 3.5 million. To complement the momentum of the Instagram Story Business Pitch, we activated 65 organic posts and 22 paid ads on social throughout the campaign. Besides social, we also leveraged on the monthly average of 17,700 search queries on Google when it came to business coaching, operation and funding with text ads informing user about exciting RM1.5 million prize quantum by Alliance Bank Malaysia. To take the campaign a step further and collect quality leads for the submission via Instagram stories and the submission portal, the ads throughout the campaign was optimized towards link clicks, landing page views and leads which we then used to exclude participants that have already signed up and create a lookalike audience to amplify the reach among highintent users that are more likely to join the challenge. As a final push for a submission call out, we analyzed the interim performance and proceeded to activate the locations most entries were submitted from, most effective ad formats, targeting and communication. In terms of targeting, we expanded the reach among indirect interest group based on digital functional tools used by business to operate, such as Hootsuite, Shopify, Google Analytics, ipay88 and more.

Effectiveness
The campaign achieved more than its set KPI on submission entries with close to 500 submissions making it the highest number of submissions since its inception in 2013, which was the campaign’s benchmark. Ads activated contributed to 90% of the total submission gained. Impression served doubled compared to the previous years, with 7.3 million impressions, and the campaign gained a social reach of 5.7 million. With the activation of Instagram Story Pitch, the campaign drove over 238,000 engagement, with 81% were from Instagram activated ads that guided users on IG Story pitch submissions. On top of that, the campaign drove a healthy number of returning users of 41% and a high time spent on landing page of 3.15 minutes displayed the effectiveness of our retargeting approach paired with the final call communication. The media strategy of optimization, systemization and innovation were effective identifying the right channels, high intent audience and turning an existing IG Story Ad format into a powerful tool for businesses to pitch their business. In all, the Alliance Bank BizSmart Challenge campaign provided a platform for SME business owners towards a step closer in saying, “Sharks, we have a deal!”

2021 | |

Tiger Street Food Virtual Festival

Advertiser: Tiger
Brand: Tiger Beer
Creative Agency: NAGA DDB, Repreise (Digital), Freeform (Activation)
Credits: -

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Objective & Challenge
• Tiger is famous for regularly hosting largescale street food festivals, complete with games and activities, live performances, and of course a great selection of street food to savour alongside icecold Tiger Beer.
• These activities strengthen brand affinity amongst target consumers, build top of mind awareness and brand equity by associating Tiger and street food (think street food, think Tiger).
• But at the end of 2020, the third wave of Covid19 cases surged in Malaysia, resulting in a strict new lockdown.
• Tiger wanted to inspire people to find special new moments despite sheltering in place. At a time of polarisation and unprecedented anxieties, Tiger wanted to bring Malaysians together.
• The challenge was to move the street food experience beyond endless live streaming towards data and techenabled experiences that mimicked extraordinary local streetfood atmosphere online
• Tiger’s target consumers were aspirational new progressive male and female drinkers aged 22 to 29 years old, who bought beer at least once a year

Insight & Strategy
• There had been plenty of online ‘events’ and festivals in the past 9 months, but livestreamed video content alone isn’t particularly engaging or novel any more. There were also many food delivery services, so we had to offer more than just a way to order food online while watching some videos.
• A food festival is about so much more than just the food. That’s what brings you there, but it’s the overall experience that people were missing the most. Walking around, checking out what various vendors have to offer, playing games and joining in on activities – and even watching live performances.
• So in addition to making sure we had a huge selection of great, authentic street food from some of the best vendors Malaysia has to offer (more than 80 across the four weekends of the festival), we really focused on replicating everything else about the experience, in a fullyimmersive 3D world.
• Therefore, Tiger wanted to bring back the excitement of street food in this ‘new normal’ by using technology and creativity to design new and accessible street food experiences via digital platforms.
• We spent around 5 months creating this from the ground up – nobody had done something like this before. We didn’t even know if it would be possible when we started. But everybody working on it really believed in the idea, and that’s what kept us going. It’s really all down to the hard work and late nights of everyone involved that we were able to make this happen.
• Unlike most virtual festivals that ran as livestreamed content, the Tiger Street Food Virtual Festival was planned as a fullyimmersive and engaging online experience; the first of its kind anywhere in the world.
• Next generation personalisation paved the way for a world of virtual street festival experiences where every consumer could be served dynamic, engaging content and Uncover the Extraordinary
• Users would be able to walk the 3D streets as their own customized avatar, interacting with others, playing games and visiting vendors, before ordering street food directly to their door through our official delivery partner – DeliverEat

Execution
• Different platforms were used throughout the three phases leading up to the festival month.
• Awareness: Launched conversations on the virtual street food festival and encouraged preregistration. Celebrity KOLs like Lizz Chloe and Harvinth Skin were hired as festival characters (NPC) to drive traffic, engagement, and Word of Mouth.
• KL Foodie, our food content partner, transformed into an animated character to show audiences the hidden gems and crowd favorites at the food festival.
• It was crucial to publish great content that resonated with audiences. Content angles around food and virtual festival were tested beforehand to determine which ones enjoyed higher affinity amongst younger and older audiences via social and programmatic buy.
• Creatives and content were developed based on the winning angle to during the official festival launch
• 12 days before the official launch of the virtual festival, we hosted an exclusive virtual event allowing media and KOL’s to preview the virtual experience • Event: A full page full color double page spread was published on The Star and The Sun to ensure the launch came in loud. Besides food, beer and games, the fully immersive experience was complete with an exclusive live performance by Malaysian hiphop artist NAMEWEE beaming all the way from Taiwan and only available for viewing within the festival. • Promotion: The campaign leveraged high reach media such as social channels and newspapers to drive sales and traffic to TraditionalOnTrade outlets.
https://thecitylist.my/blog/tigerbeerlaunchesfirstofitskindmalaysianstreetfoodvirtualfestival https://funntaste.com/tigers1stevervirtualstreetfoodfestival/
https://www.thedrum.com/news/2020/11/03/tigerbeerintroducesvirtualstreetfoodfiestasatisfymalaysianscravings https://klfoodie.com/tigerstreetfoodvirtualfestival2020/ https://says.com/my/tech/tigerstreetfoodvirtualfestival#

Effectiveness
• Compared to Q3’20, in Q4’20 when the festival ran Tiger enjoyed uplift on regular consumption by 5%.
• Media garnered 38 million total impressions, with 80% total campaign reach vs KPI 50%
• Site traffic 280 thousand, more than double original KPI of 108 thousand
• Virtual Festival Site: o 24 thousand signups vs KPI 21 thousand o Beat Sales KPI by 6% for F&B festival orders, Drinkies (ecommerce site) sales uplift of 41% vs prepromo o 20 thousand Namewee performance views o More distinctive brand image: +3 vs Q3
• Gained 2pt market share vs competitors in Offtrade channels
• PR received 76 media attendance and 100 earned coverage with 97% MQI score vs KPI of 85%
• Tiger’s brand health also improved across most of the brand imageries: Especially: o Brands for people like me: +5 vs Q3 o More distinctive brand image: +3 vs Q3 o Is a beer that goes well with food: +4 vs Q3

2021 | |

Coca-Cola “Unlocks” The City for Malaysians During Lockdown

Advertiser: Coca-Cola Far East Ltd
Brand: Coca-Cola
Creative Agency: N/A
Credits: -

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Objective & Challenge
Malaysia’s Movement Control Order (MCO) changed the fabric of “normal” in the country. Nearly overnight, people could not publicly gather, be near each other and were stuck at home 24/7 leading to psychological and emotional stress. A study found 1 in 2 Malaysians experienced anxiety and depression during lockdown. Coca–Cola Malaysia as business was also challenged to adjust to the new reality. Coca–Cola consumption outside of home was suddenly marginalized. We needed to shift our business priorities to focus on in–home meal occasions to drive sustainable volume since everyone was at home. We needed a solution to address both of our business and consumers we serve. We realized we had a unique opportunity help people cope by bringing back some joy and excitement into their lives in ways that are unique and meaningful to them, during these tough times. The launch of our Cari–Cari Gol campaign in partnership with McDonald’s in mid2020, at the heart of the lockdown did just that. Here’s our story.

Insight & Strategy
Malaysians, restless and stuck at home were missing three things: FOR 65%, WATCHING FOOTBALL: Malaysia is a football nation, handicapped from watching their favorite games and sporting events such as English Premier League or the Olympics due to sudden cancellations brought about by Covid lockdowns. GOING OUT AND EXPERIENCING OLD HAUNTS: Consumers, especially those 35yrs and below, missed going to old and familiar locations: their gym, school, urban exploration, nightlife, eating out in groups and enjoying the food and ambience, as well as for football crazies, missing the scale and energy watching as fans in stadiums. They missed the joy and excitement of being ‘in action’ and on the world ‘outside’ beyond home. GOING OUT AND FINDING SOMETHING NEW: Neuroscientific evidence shows people place great value and meaning to places, and that different places evoke different emotions, such as joy, security, and wellbeing. And that is why the discovery of new places and things within are compelling to people. It serves as a motivation for users to go and explore to trigger both emotional relief and excitement. OUR STRATEGY We merged Malaysian’s common interests together: Football, The Familiar and The New, to get them excited and be in ‘action’, through a gamified “Virtual Reality (VR) Football Treasure Hunt” unlocked through a meal– bundling activation with McDonald’s a long–term partner loved by millions of Malaysians. The McDonald’s and Coca–Cola meal, provided a “virtual key” to access this experience in three steps: 1. Consumers scan the QR code on the McDonald’s x Coke cup part of the meal. 2. Upload a receipt image as proof of purchase of McDonald’s meal with Coca–Cola beverage. 3. Start “Cari–Cari Gol” in our 1st ever VR football hunt! Stomachs happy, fun begins!

Execution
LOCAL BECOMES VIRTUAL We virtually augmented real locations in Malaysia and turned them into treasure–hunting virtual environments as game levels that users could immerse in, explore, and discover hidden prizes within, using their mobile devices or computers. The locations need to be familiar and missed among the Malaysians during the lockdown. The seven locations we chose were those commonly identified and missed publicly available spots by Malaysians during lockdown: Bukit Jalil Stadium, Shah Alam Football Stadium, historic Chinatown street (Lorong Panggung), several universities and gyms! These locations were also chosen because they were suitable for interactive and immersive treasure–hunting: rich in the number of exploration spots, with hidden spaces where our little JavaScript elves could hide the prizes. Treasure–hunt mechanics were weaved into the 3D data, and incorporated exciting football–related sound effects, imagery, prizes, and concepts to fulfill our young consumers’ explorative slant. KICKSTARTING THE GAME The experience kicks off with the sound of a football referee blowing his whistle. The player then navigates skillfully around the environment, weaving around walls, doorways, and pillars for a possible prize, which could be behind a door, on the ceiling, or in virtually any nook and cranny. When a prize is found, the player must make a game–changing decision whether to forego the prize for a chance to find a better substitute prize elsewhere in the virtual environment. Not an easy decision. The player might also find performance–enhancing powerups that add extra time to the game to find better prizes. Over +20,000 prizes were chosen specifically to cater to the football theme, namely Coke football keychains, EPL club jerseys, tickets to live EPL matches in the UK and more. SEAMLESS ONLINEOFFLINE INTEGRATION We made the gaming experience seamless for consumers as their brand experience starts from scanning a QR code on a Coca–Cola cup as part of every McDonald’s meal ordered, to direct them to the virtual game immediately. If the player finds a prize in the hunt within 60 seconds from the start, they will be notified immediately for verification, and for their achievements, have their football–related prize delivered to them shortly!

Effectiveness
We reached over 7M people and drove over 650,000 engagements on social media. The game brought over 76,000 visitors, with over 9,700 returning visitors. Business spiked! The average number of meals purchased for repeat participation in the game was also increased to five meals, within the two–month period, two meals greater than the norm. Best of all, players got absolutely immersed! Google Analytics shows 50% interested in sports, 8% in football, and 45% interested in fast food, a wide mix of players! The standard deviation of number of plays across the game levels by the end of the campaign rose to almost 2.5 times that of game level plays at the beginning. This trend coincided with the emergence of game levels with a high win–to–play ratio AND a high play rate. No doubt, players were starting to strategize and discuss tactics. Some players spent a great deal of time honing their skills, by playing more than 30 times! Half the players decided to keep the prize while the other half kept playing and “gaming the game” to find a better one. More than a game, we gave them joy, distraction, respite, and another reason “to play on.”