Malaysian Media Awards Winners Showcase





2011 | |

Turning Away from PAY-PER-PITCH Blogging – Digi Evangelists

Advertiser: DiGi Telecommunications
Brand: DiGi
Creative Agency: Nuffnang
Credits: Hieu Kau Sern (Digital Director), Mark Darren Lee (DiGi Telecommunications), Nicholas Chay/Jestine Goon/Timothy Tiah (Nuffnang)

Challenge
SuperBloggers like Celcom-sponsored BeautifulNara.com and Maxis-sponsored Kenny Sia often attracts 19million+ visitors per year, thus are paid hefty sponsorship fees in return for pitching their particular patron brand. DiGi had to make a seemingly no-win call in the blogging space: either Pay to Play, or forfeit playing at all.

Solutions
In 2010, they were between 150,000-250,000 active bloggers in Malaysia. For every 100 “SuperBlogger”, they were at least 1000 small-medium-sized bloggers (SMBs). Aggregating a fraction of these SMBs could potentially become the Biggest Media Nobody Had Ever Heard Of! 4000 small-medium-sized bloggers would yield 96,000,000 audiences. These bloggers who weren’t popular enough to “deserve” invites to big launches, or deemed NOT influential enough to deserve gadgets for review. Thus DiGi Angels community program was created.

Execution
The first of its kind, DiGi Angels was designed for SMBs; blogosphere community activities were designed to help them grow, reward, inspire and be recognized: •Invited to cover media launches alongside top journalists •Test and review cutting-edge devices •Created blogger socials •Promote “New Blogger-of-the-Week” on DiGi’s website •Organized a “How to Become a SuperBlogger” bootcamps •Intimate Secret Events with celebrity performances, appearances only the community would have details to.

Result
An average 12.3 new DiGi evangelists per day for a year, to be unpaid brand advocates. In early 2011, we had 5163 evangelists, 43.2million readers combined, posted DiGi related articles that generated over RM9,000,000worth of PR value; all without being paid a single cent to do so!