Malaysian Media Awards Winners Showcase





2014 | |

BlackBerry Empowers Youth Ambition

Advertiser: BlackBerry Malaysia
Brand: BlackBerry Q5
Creative Agency: LiquidThread
Credits: LiquidThread — Asreena Ramdan (Senior Project Executive); Starcom — Nasser Mokhtar (Planning Manager), Stephanie Foong (Planning Director), Aditi Roy (Senior Media Planner)

The Challenge
Touch screen pioneer Apple and goliath Samsung are crushing every other smartphone, even the once- cool Blackberry failed to keep pace with its rivals. Youth perceive ‘QWERTY’ as outdated and a not-for- me phone. The newly launched Blackberry Q5 needed to find a space in the hearts of Malaysian youth.

The Solution – Insight & Idea
College students are now willing to explore alternative jobs upon graduation. Gone are the days where Malaysian graduates go after accounting, law and engineering jobs. They form the generation of ‘Millennials’ who are connected via smartphones and are attracted to self entrepreneurism. With this insight, we begun by identifying a variety of ‘alternative’ jobs that resonate with these Millennials. For each job, we found recent graduate hipsters who owned pop-up retail outlets, artisan coffee houses etc. Also, with iPhones and other Android based smartphones being in the ‘mainstream’; instead of battling in a losing field, we recommended that Blackberry shift from mainstream to alternative – to be indie, to be hipster, to be bold and be daring to inspire youth to take a bold step in their lives. Blackberry needed to be the new forbidden fruit. Our content idea, “Empowering Ambitions” was to inspire students to go after their real dreams, and not settle with mainstream jobs. The five commandments of Empowering Ambitions are: Passion and the ability to inspire. Clear set of values. Role models will be admired. Commitment to community. Selflessness and acceptance of others. Ability to overcome obstacles.

The Execution
In Phase 1, we got students to talk about their dreams, not just their careers. The call for action was on YouTube. Students had to upload videos of themselves on the Empowering Ambitions microsite stating their dreams. On-ground visits of selected colleges to hunt for more dream chasers were organized. The next phase, we aired videos on YouTube comprising a story with 5 minisodes that depict five real life friends who are professionals and in the midst of chasing their dreams. They have different backgrounds, different jobs – a fashion designer, chef, top blogger, web content visualiser, and a model. The cast were actually portraying their real jobs in these videos. What kept the group together, despite their busy lives was their BlackBerry Q5s. The story started with the fashion designer who had a crisis and called for help from her 4 friends. As the story unfolds, so do the product features. The final episode revealed the student winner, Umadevi Vengedesh, where she spent a day with the cast as her mentors.

The Results
Blackberry succeeded in reaching out to the Millennials. The microsite and video attracted over 5,195,365 impressions with 745,201 completed views and 72,563 clicks. This exceeded KPI by 54%. In 2 weeks, there were over 800 student entries. Conversations and photos were shared across social media and Instagram.