2014

The Challenge
With consumer spoiled with choices in Fast Food category, driving foot traffic is challenging despite its tickling their taste buds. With walk-ins reducing naturally during the festive season, our task was to ensure spectacular launch for KFC’s Golden Chicken Wrap for CNY 2013 and counter McDonalds’ festive offering.

The Solution – Insight & Idea
INSIGHT: Whenever someone gets a gift wrapped with a nice bow, it adds to the occasion, the excitement, the expectation and surprise of finding the gift after peeling through the layers of wrapping, is one of the most genuine and heartfelt moments. Malaysians, however don’t always wrap their gifts, the extra effort is made only for special people. More importantly, that moment opening a present is even more special. STRATEGY: We devised a cutting edge strategy that activates consumer’s 5 senses to heighten the sensorial pleasure of opening a gift wrap and make every moment of opening a KFC Golden Wrap special. IDEA: Every day, even though our morning newspaper carries fresh news it is not unique, more often than not the same old mundane look. We decided to surprise Malaysians on a fine lovely morning to have their morning paper delivered and gift wrapped. We used high quality wrapping paper to activate their touch and feel senses with injecting sensorial pleasure of unwrapping their golden gift. It was a first ever.

The Execution
We did not want to do a simple format but a strikingly mind blowing format to activate consumer’s touch sense. Negotiation and exploration took 2 solid months before coming to fruition. It was a media first; a new format innovation with The Sun. We found that The Sun mapped our audience profile perfectly with the right distribution and affinity. It is a paper disseminated across offices, transits, restaurants and home that allows our message to be seen everywhere. We gift wrapped every single copy of the paper with high quality paper bearing the KFC red with a rich golden embossed ribbon that greeted our consumer that special morning. Consumers across every distribution touch points were surprised by gifts lying around for them. When opened, KFC Golden Wrapped was presented in full glory topped with an insatiable appeal and desirable offer. Estimated 2.6 million people saw the execution in various locations where The Sun tagged.

The Results
Top of mind awareness soared by 12.5% directly at the expense of McDonald’s in the same quarter. This resulted in a jump in visitation by 11% pushing our brand share up by 5% in a declining category. It was our highest ever in 11 quarters. Marketing 4Ps also benefited. ‘High quality food’: +5%, ‘New & interesting to try’ +4% and most importantly best tasting chicken +14%!

The Challenge
Electrical appliances for home beauty regime is relatively new to Malaysian women. How can we make Panasonic Beauty the synonymous leader in this category? In a complex category, we must first gain the trust of alpha users who will then pave the way for followers.

The Solution – Insight & Idea
Alpha females love their glossy female magazines. There is nothing better than flipping through pages and pages of perfect photo shots of the latest handbag, shoe or miracle face cream that they would love to get their hands on. But what really goes into a magazines? The coveted first few double page spread international brands clamour over. The fashion features. The latest trends, personality test and gossip columns. The local editorial pieces. Each section is carefully constructed for hours of reading pleasure. Media agency recognised that running print ads alone and placed after many other pages of international high fashion brands may not have the desired impact. For readers to really appreciate the Panasonic Beauty products, we had to demonstrate its efficacy. Who better than the magazine’s own editorial team to become our Trust Ambassadors. Hence, we went out to identify and negotiate with not ten, twenty or thirty professionals, we secured the assistance of 108 magazine professionals in our aggressive plan to win over the market. Everyone was given the free hand to craft the pages as they see fit.

The Execution
8 months. 10 top Female magazines including InTrend. 46 compelling editorial pieces crafted. One of the pieces is “How to prepare for a party with Panasonic Beauty”. It went on a journey to discover how a celebrity prepares for a big night. A 4-page feature spread tastefully integrated 6 different Panasonic Beauty products and its application. In the morning, she uses the face steamer to get her skin moisturised and pocket doltz toothbrush to ensure every teeth is pearly white. Stockings can be thrown away when she has silky smooth legs to show, thanks to the epilator effective in removing every small unsightly stubble. With the compact hair iron, every strand of hair is in place. She finishes her look for the night with eye lash curler for enchanting eyes. Across the different magazines, 45 more unique pieces were customised for its reader. Each editorial piece brought its reader on a journey of discovery and greater understanding and appreciation for Panasonic Beauty appliances.

The Results
For 8 months, Panasonic dominated the entire magazine platform reaching over 500,000 Alpha women. Engagement was at all time high at 78%. With brand endorsement from 108 beauty experts, Panasonic’s brand parameters against our target group increased double digit: Brand consideration increased 25% Brand preference grew 33% Total brand image scores improved 60%. Sales of the Panasonic Beauty range exceeded supply.

The Challenge
With Matt Damon starrer ELYSIUM, Sony Pictures wanted to reach out to audiences beyond the typical Sci-Fi buffs. With several highly anticipated movies lined up for release around the same time, our challenge was to reach out and entice cine viewers beyond the Sci- Fi lovers, and maximize incremental ticket sales.

The Solution – Insight & Idea
Insight: Malaysians are inherently social media activists and highly opinionated. They desire a utopian state of being with specific grouse on traffic, weather, pollution, real estate prices, etc. They love to evaluate their current state and often voice out how they could be a lot better. Media agency proposed to tap on this deep Malaysian desire for utopia, to pull them into theatres to watch Elysium- a place where everything is better. Strategy: Media Agency proposed to convert the ‘COMPLAINTS INTO TICKET SALES’ strategy, which involved identifying all areas of discomfort and juxtapose them with Elysium, to create desire and hence ticket sales. A multi-media approach was proposed to target timezones and content where the pain points were talked about the most, contextualizing the ‘promise of a better place i.e. Elysium’. Idea: A day in the life of a Malaysian was mapped where different times had different media exposures and respective pain point discussions. Through research, the top pain points were identified and mapped with respect to each media platform and daypart. Elysium attacked all those moments with the promise of ‘it’s better up there in Elysium’. By placing such strong contextual message, curiosity about Elysium was created.

The Execution
With Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur ranked #7 in world’s most dangerous cities, there was need gap for the common Malaysian, they desired safe living, quality amenities and confidence to go out without any fear, the very things Elysium stood for. Media Agency recommended launching the Elysium, like a new property launch. Safe haven, with first world amenity, BOTs for protection, clean air and no traffic. We strategically positioned our ad in the property section of the newspaper title relevant to our target audience, with reader spending average 40% more time on property section versus other we had rapped attention, our promise of “It’s Better Up There” and claiming it to be “THE BEST PLACE TO LIVE…”, we successfully communicated Elysium launch to an unsuspecting audience and were able to arouse curiosity around the movie.

The Results
The campaign reached 60% of target audience, as Elysium became the #1 movie on the Malaysian box office for the first 2 weeks. Movie grossed more than US $ 2 million within few weeks beating targets by 34% and outperformed a similar genre big budget movie, Vin Diesel starrer Riddick’s opening week collection.

The Challenge
In 2012, SNICKERS launched the new “You’re not you when you’re hungry” proposition with character, the infamous weakling – LínDàiyu as a goalkeeper. Her presence on non-TV media has yet to be maximized. How could this weakling push SNICKERS to be the top 5 chocolate brands by end 2013?

The Solution – Insight & Idea
Malaysians love their football. But they don’t know LínDàiYu, a character from a classical Chinese fiction novel. This character who was very ladylike, plays a weak goalkeeper. Her sentimental and perpetual weak qualities reminds us of our behaviour whenever we are hungry. When we are weak, we complain, and are out of character. We needed to make LínDàiyu popular across media channels. We had to infiltrate sports segments across mainstream channels. Therefore we became LínDàiyu’s sports agent. Our role was to promote her and negotiate her appearance in the different media scenes. One of an important scene for her appearance was newspaper. The idea: Make LínDàiyu the next sports spokesperson for The Sun’s sports section.

The Execution
We partnered with The Sun for LínDàiyu to become a football ‘news reporter’. She presented football match blunders with a “Quote of the Day”. Whenever there were football blunders, LínDàiyu will appear the next few days giving her ‘updates’ on these blunders. Our visual and media content worked hand-in-hand, making LínDàiyu part of the content. For example, LínDàiyu was strategically placed below a match blunder with news headline “Sloppy Goalkeeping could cost Old Lady”. This followed by SNICKERS’ proposition, “You’re not you when you’re hungry” conveniently placed below a grieving football player. In total we had a series of 7 newspaper content, each covering 2 pages each. Product and brand logo dominated approximately 60% of the page. Unconventional layout brought readers’ attention to SNICKERS. The call-for-action message drove audience to the online contest, “Hungry for SNICKERS”.

The Results
SNICKERS scored and secured the Top 5 chocolate brands position by end of 2013.(Source:ACNielsen,Chocolate Retail Audit’13) The Sun sports section reached over 300,000 readers and helped push the participation and engagement for the online contest. SNICKERS garnered 26,658 entries, increased its Facebook fans by 132% and engagement rate to 27% from a monthly 1.6% average. More importantly, audience recognized SNICKERS satisfies hunger. Brand awareness increased from 92% to 96%. (Source: Ipsos, Brand Health 2012/13)

The Challenge
Maggi launched Magic Meals, a ground-breaking culinary product that involves cooking a meal in a plastic bag using rice cooker. Since the product concept is first of its kind in Malaysia, our challenge was to educate consumers on the unconventional cooking method and convince them to personally experience the product.

The Solution – Insight & Idea
To attain rapid acceptance for this new cooking technique, our strategy was to induce trial by conducting mass consumer sampling. Conventional in-store promoters are good at sampling prepared food for shoppers to taste but they lack the credibility to educate consumers on the new cooking method and possible fear and questions on food safety issues (cooking with a plastic-looking bag provided by Maggi Magic Meals). On the other hand, we know that print is regarded as a credible medium by our target, and is our consumers’ main source of information for the latest products or services in the market. Marrying these insights, we recommended a unique solution: to use newspapers as our sampling agent to distribute Maggi Magic Meals samples into Malaysian homes. We capitalized on the newspapers’ high circulation, daily speed-to-market and also its credibility as a medium to educate about new cooking method and address concerns on food safety. For the first time ever, an actual food product was attached to the newspaper and given to consumers to sample.

The Execution
To increase visibility, we negotiated with publishers and secured creative placement for our ads and sample packs in spaces mother wouldn’t miss. Our communication space highlighted all the essential information that mothers need to know about this new innovation from our innovative product range to step-by-step preparation, plastic bag safety assurance and most importantly the actual food product stick-on the newspaper where mothers could have their first-hand experience in their own comfort home. For a flawless execution, there were several rounds of pressure test being done with publishers to ensure feasibility of the stick-on. Within a day, publisher glued hundreds of thousands of the actual food products on the newspapers and had them distributed out to the homes.

The Results
As a result, Maggi Magic Meals were sampled over 120,000 households in just 1 day!

1. 80% of home cooks become aware of this new innovation by Maggi and all of them were keen to try.
2. Everyone who have tried the product wanted more.
3. Maggi Magic Meals’ off-take contributed to a 15% increase in Maggi’s market share during the launch month itself. (Source: Nielsen & Millward Brown)