Malaysian Media Awards Winners Showcase





2013 | |

Capturing Chinese Hearts at CNY Through Sin Chew

Advertiser: PETRONAS Group
Brand: PETRONAS Corporate
Creative Agency: Zenith Malaysia
Credits: Lee Tse Yoon (Planning Director), Mandy Chan (Media Manager), Terisa Yip (Senior Buying Manager), Liew Pui Shin (Media Buyer)

Challenge
Chinese New Year (CNY) is a time of joy and family bonding. With its new tagline, “Reimagining Energy”, PETRONAS wanted to reach out and connect with the Chinese meaningfully, illustrating the brand’s values and sincerity. How could it sincerely bring alive brand values of talent development and knowledge transfer? 

Solution
Our insights : 1. Malaysian Chinese are very close-knit through Chinese schools and Chinese press. Chinese community donates millions annually to keep Chinese schools alive as standard-bearers of culture. 2. We discovered that Chinese are into photography: camera sales are growing 50% annually, and over 1 million visit photo sites every month. We combined these insights to devise a unique, first of its kind photography contest, to capture the Chi and build brand affiniChi. 

Execution
Identifying Sin Chew, leading Chinese newspaper, we devised a partnership beyond static ads. 1. Entered 7 prominent Chinese schools, 3 colleges to conduct photography workshops (a) Chong Hwa, Hin Hua, Confucian, SMJK Katholik etc. 2. Six editorials spanning 1.5 months, amplifying credibility: (a) on PETRONAS’ Facebook contest (b) on photography (c) interview with students and principals (d) featured good submissions (e) finale piece : winners interviews. 3. Full-time reporter followed our campaign throughout. 

Results
Brand affinity grew – 52% sees PETRONAS as “Caring, Passionate, Innovative & Bold” –Reached 1.3mil Sin Chew readers –3,150 photographs entered in 3 weeks –40,586 new Facebook fans –750 Chinese students trained –Earned media: RM1.1mil across 16 newspapers, TV, 50 bloggers –ROI of 4.61 Clearly, PETRONAS CNY campaign “clicked!”