Malaysian Media Awards Winners Showcase

Challenge
As Malaysia’s pioneer instant noodle brand, MAGGI was fast becoming “old-fashioned” in light of new exotic flavours from competitors. But it’s financially unfeasible for MAGGI to produce new flavours for every competitor’s flavour. How can we use creative marketing to make MAGGI’s classic flavours fresh in the minds of consumers?

Solution
Malaysia’s diverse cuisine often sees consumers seeking their “hometown” comfort food to satisfy their cravings. Capitalizing on this insight, we set out to showcase MAGGI’s versatility, and how consumers can adapt MAGGI’s classic flavours into multiple dishes with the “taste of home”. To bring out nostalgic authenticity that embraces all ethnicities and dialects, we collaborated with food specialists to produce 10 recipes that traversed all Malaysian tastes – from north to south, east to peninsular.

Execution
Inspired by food travelogue, we partnered top TV stations to produce 2- minute MAGGI hometown recipe “food-o-logue” series. Beyond the normal recipe tutorial, we featured the stations’ celebrity hosts searching for the hometown taste and highlighted each hometown cuisine’s history. The series anchored on a fixed daily time slot preceding a TV series with the best viewership for our target. Viewers were encouraged to visit MAGGI’s Facebook for more recipes.

Results
MAGGI’s hometown “food-o-logue” was a success, reaching 75% Malaysians. Over 50% believed that MAGGI could be part of Malaysians’ favourite dishes. Our classic flavours were refreshed in consumer’s minds, leading to 13% higher likelihood to purchase (Source: Kantar). Within 3 months, the series garnered over 1.6 million views online.