Malaysian Media Awards Winners Showcase

The Challenges
AirAsia was launching their biggest branding campaign with one major catch: As an ATL agency, we have no access to client’s digital platforms. Our challenge lies in creating a campaign with high converting reach, while maintaining a cost efficient spend by utilizing only traditional media.

Insight, Strategy and the Idea
Having no access to digital media, we had to be extremely careful of our touchpoints. Every attention we get needs to be cost efficient eyeballs leading to conversions. To ensure high visibility and focused attention, we needed mediums that have a captive audience. Tough luck, as our travelers tend to be young, active people who are always on the move. But no matter how active they are, they will always come to a halt at certain points in their day, when they’re WAITING for something to happen. We call these the “Waiting Moment Mediums”. These are moments when our travelers are stuck waiting for something, like being stuck in traffic jams, waiting for the train, or stuck in the cinema hall. Being stuck there waiting with nowhere to go, they now become a captive audience focusing on their nearest medium as a source of visual entertainment. With a captive audience stuck and looking for a source of entertainment, we decided to bring the entertainment to THEM! Our idea: Converting visual waiting mediums into mini cinemas!

Media Execution
Launching our mini cinemas, we would need captivating mini movies. We took 5 stars and filmed their soul searching journey travelling through 5 countries. Week 1: ElfiraLoy’s New Inspiration in Seoul, Week 2: AlvinChong’s New Perspectives in Taipei, Week 3: ZahirahMcWilson’s New Beginnings in Tokyo, and many more! Each week, a new mini movie with a new destination is launched. Driving urgency to action, each movie was paired with its own flight promos valid only for the week that the movies are screened. When commuters enter the train stations, they’ll start seeing teasers of our movie posters on lightboxes screens around the stations. While waiting for their train to arrive, they get to watch our movies being broadcasted on large digital screens at the train platforms. While they’re driving back from work and stuck in traffic jams, they’ll get to relax & watch our movies on large OOH digital boards around different parts of the cities. At the cinema lobby, while waiting for their cinema halls to open, they’ll see teaser posters of our movies on poster pillars. Once they’re inside the halls waiting for their movie to play, we hijacked the premium positions with our travel movies before the actual movie screening. Ironically, they were watching our movies before their actual movie! In parallel every single week, radios and newspapers continuously remind travelers that our promo deals will be expiring within one week, driving extreme urgency to book the tickets.

Results and Effectiveness
We reached more than 4.7 million of CAPTIVE audience across 5 weeks. AirAsiaX had +35% higher conversion rate for “Airline Most Often Flown”, their highest in past 3 years! 6.1 million passengers flew with us, that’s +6% higher than previous year. This was all done without touching a single digital medium.