Malaysian Media Awards Winners Showcase

The Challenges
Having seen a downturn in 2016, the beginning of 2017 continued to be a difficult period for automotive manufacturers due to factors such as rising cost of living, floods, and economic uncertainties. We needed to find a solution that could lift the stagnant monthly sales numbers for Perodua.

Insight, Strategy and the Idea
Consumer research showed that intent to purchase was highest when a consumer has visited an automotive showroom. This meant we had to find new ways to target consumers soon after they had visited a Perodua or competitor showroom in order to increase the likelihood of conversions. We negotiated with Blis, whose programmatic platform was integrated with Google Maps, to specifically identify and pin the locations of all automotive showrooms. Leveraging on Blis’ large pool of audience tracked via multiple networks, we were able to record not only GPS information of customers who visited showrooms, but also the time of day and week where the footfall was highest. This information allowed us to integrate media exposure with the consumers real-time on-ground behavior.

Media Execution
The top newspaper and radio titles in each language were selected based on their readership and listenership against our target audience. What differentiated this plan from others was the way in which the exposure was timed. Using data collated from Blis, we focused on those days of week, and also down to times of day, when potential car buyers were more likely to visit automotive showrooms. This enabled us to create better recency of exposure and top of mind amongst consumers with high purchase intent. High impact full colour newspaper ads were utilized on days when showroom visits peaked, sustained with smaller half page ads in the lead up. A similar approach was adopted on radio. We focused on times of day when potential car buyers were more likely on to be on the road visiting showrooms and targeted them with a variety of formats that included spot buys, feature branding, infozone, anchor bloc and live mentions. On digital, we tapped into the mobile device IDs captured by Blis to retarget consumers soon after leaving a showroom and throughout their car purchase journey. Online ads were served contextually, alongside automotive related content to create relevance, and supported by multi device targeting to increase the frequency of exposure to each potential car buyer.

Results and Effectiveness
This first of its kind execution contributed to a 25% uplift in monthly sales numbers. Showroom footfall increased by over 15,000 every month. By the end of a difficult year, targets were exceeded by 15% and Perodua maintained its number one position for the most vehicles sold in 2017!