Malaysian Media Awards Winners Showcase

The Challenge
Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra (MPO) is a world class orchestra located at
Dewan Filharmonik PETRONAS (DFP). Its aim is to expand interest in classical
(and other music) among Malaysians. The MPO has a dedicated audience of
older music lovers, but needed to connect with the younger audiences who had
never sampled its delights. How could we we bring MPO out of its beautiful hall
and strengthen the understanding of classical orchestra music amongst
millennials?

Insight, Strategy and the Idea
We understood a key component that makes music interesting is the stories that comes
hand-in-hand with each piece composed. In classical music, beyond the stories of how
the musical piece was composed, lie personal stories about the musicians of the
orchestra. We decided to ignite curiosity by bringing inspiring stories to the public and expose the key performers and conductors to become advocates for classical music.

Media Execution
We partnered up with BFM, a radio station that has a high affinity amongst PMEBs
listeners and for the first time ever, brought MPO out of its halls. We co-created a
segment, ‘Classical Exposed’ where every week we would invite musicians from MPO to
join the segment where they would share inspiring stories about themselves and classical music.

Results and Effectiveness
We successfully brought MPO out of its halls and exposed itself via a variety of
musicians from MPO. We inspired and reach over 350,000 PMEB listeners about
classical music and brought the brand’s DNA to life in expanding musical interest
through a first ever classical music segment, ‘Classical Exposed’. This contributed
to the increase of 13% in ticket sales in the second half of the year which had
MPO played sweet music to DFP’s ears.