Malaysian Media Awards Winners Showcase

The Challenges
To drive ticket sales, we needed to get every Malaysian excited for the KL2017 SEA-Games, especially 100-days leading up to the Games. This includes English-speaking Malaysians, who typically are not strong followers of local sports. With so many days to go and coverage so scarce, how do we get them invested in the Games?

Insight, Strategy and the Idea
We adopted a content-led education vs. an advertising-first approach, the latter is expensive and has low credibility amongst our target audience. We partnered with The Star, No.1 English daily to commence a 100 days countdown with a consistent stream of SEA Games editorials. To get people invested in the Games, we needed to educate readers about both its past, present; the sports and our athletes. Thus, our content strategy was built around 4 key pillars: 1) Malaysia & The Games’ History, 2) The Sports, 3) The Participating Athletes and 4) KL2017 SEA-Games features (e.g. venue and Torch Run journey).

Media Execution
Working with the The-Star editorial and research team, we developed a series of eye-catching infographics and hand-drawn illustrations about each sport, its rules and participating athletes; with archives dated all the way back to the 1975 SEA-Games, gems that many did not know prior! All 38 games and 404 events were featured in the coverage with the Games’ mascot, Rimau, presenting the countdown to drive anticipation.

Results and Effectiveness
• 130 articles published in the 100 days lead-up to the Games, ensuring that the Games’ had daily coverage, a significant achievement from a zero-coverage status prior to the game.

• PR value of RM6.3 million which is 35.1X ROI delivered on paid editorial

• Cumulative reach and exposure to 1.789 mil The Star readers. This contributed towards the final achievement, with all games being 90% sold out (Basketball, Swimming, Volleyball and Diving being 100% sold out). Source: Nielsen Sports & CommSights /Nielsen Press Reach