Malaysian Media Awards Winners Showcase





2014 | |

Turning RED.fm BLUE

Advertiser: Samsung
Brand: Samsung
Creative Agency: LiquidThread, StarRFM Group
Credits: LiquidThread — Siti Khairuddin (Associate Director – Brand Connections), Asreena Ramdan LiquidThread (Senior Project Executive);Starcom — Andrea Samuel (Digital Manager), YemMeng Chong (Media Planner)

The Challenge
Malaysians love Barclays Premier League (BPL) football. Samsung, as lead sponsor of Chelsea Football Club, has Malaysia as an important stop on the Chelsea Asia Tour. We needed to promote the tour in advance to bring Chelsea FC fans closer to the action and to feature Samsung prominently.

The Solution – Insight & Idea
Malaysians are infatuated with the BPL – eating, drinking and sleeping football. During BPL season, PayTV sports subscription spikes: football fans want to catch their favourite teams such as Man United, Liverpool and Arsenal. Whilst there are a lot of BPL followers, they don’t necessarily love Chelsea. Through agency research, we uncovered that Man United fans are 10 times more engaged than Chelsea’s across social media. Samsung didn’t want other football fans to come out and root against Chelsea! Known as the True Blues – Chelsea fans, like all true BPL followers pride themselves on their club loyalty. Not content with fans only attending matches, Samsung wanted Chelsea fans to unite across the country, spread the gospel and indoctrinate new fans of the club and its sponsor. With the tour upcoming, we wanted Chelsea fans to flood the media and own every BPL conversation, even the ones on RED.fm, an iconic Malaysian radio station that is a local outpost for the Manchester United Red Devils. We wanted to turn RED.fm into Chelsea BLUE.

The Execution
Turning RED.fm blue was no small task: We started with the radio station’s lead DJ JJ, a well-known Manchester United fan. For four weeks we asked him to find the truest, bluest Chelsea fan. They had to call in and answer questions all true Chelsea fans should know. The champions advanced to play for a grand prize trip to Stamford Bridge, London. DJs also placed a wager to spur on Chelsea fans. If Chelsea fans could answer all the questions correctly and prove their passion for Chelsea, RedFM DJs would up the stakes and turn Blue for one day. RedFM websites and social media pages were used to magnify the participation and conversations of RedFM turning BLUE. Concurrently, a mobile LED truck went around major cities for two days hunting for “True Blue” fans. Our True Blues succeeded. RedFM conceded its “RED” brand for one day declaring that it was “BLUE FM”. The DJs amplified the ‘blue intensity’ by Tweeting, Instagramming and Facebooking their new loyalty to Chelsea and Samsung.

The Results
Samsung connected with fans. 237,000 listeners were garnered during the campaign, generating 4.5x media ROI. 96,185 users were led directly from RED.fm website to the Samsung Facebook page; increasing Samsung’s social fan base. 170,000 people across multiple cities were exposed to the LED truck. 20,467 social posts were created in 4 weeks, conversations spurred by football fans organically increased by 100%. DJ JJ who “passionately” supported MU, had his loyalty questioned by his followers online