Malaysian Media Awards Winners Showcase

The Challenges
Hard times force us to make changes. Malaysia’s economic challenges – tougher rules on hire purchase loans, and a weaker job market – have persuaded many families to postpone buying a new car. As a result, the average age of the cars on the road has increased. But it’s no surprise to find that car oil changes are being missed – after all, car oil is a low involvement category, so inertia and apathy are typical. Even Shell Helix, the number 1 preferred car oil brand in Malaysia, was suffering, with usage in decline.

Insight, Strategy and the Idea
Ramadan itself possess challenge from media perspective: too much clutter on air waves and limited retention of consumers. Also, the traffic jams are a much bigger reality during those thirty days and the time spent in car increases considerably. The idea was to use that “in car moment” with a twist.

Media Execution
We have partnered with Astro; and gave them an unusual brief to utilize their Radio Data System; which they were not aware of. RDS is a communications protocol standard for embedding small amounts of digital information in conventional FM radio broadcasts. It is the digital signals that help you see the channel name on your car radio e.g. ERA FM or MY FM. This small piece of text gave us the opportunity to break the clutter on audio waves during Ramadan. We promoted our national consumer promo throughout the month “VISUALLY” across the cars in Malaysia at the premium real estate of car dashboards. The final catch: We negotiated this idea with Astro as value addition because it was our idea; and later they can commercialize it with other advertisers on the visual inventory they never thought they had.

Results and Effectiveness
Volume increase +2% Oil changes redemption +7,565 (highest ever) Shell Helix remains the no. 1 brand in Malaysia