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The Challenges
Amidst more aggressive price competition in the airline category, how do we continue to drive sales and Return On Marketing Investment (ROMI) for MalaysiaAirlines?

Insight, Strategy and the Idea
First, maximise synergies in offline/online spends and offline/online sales to identify the most optimum ratio maximising demand. Next, drive value per transaction by analyzing the customer’s journey through ancillary pages (e.g. accommodation, transportation, and travel insurance) to identify segments willing to spend. This meant integrating our existing data pool of 5 types of slow and fast datasets load factor by routes, realtime consumer behaviour data on the online booking site, lookalike modelling of our frequent flyer database, audience segments being prospected by our programmatic display partners and flight fare prices from GoogleFlightSearch – with:
1. Online and offline (travel agent) sales report vs. online/offline media spends
2. Pixel extension across the full purchase journey, including ancillary pages

Media Execution
Optimising total spends ratio: Analysing historical campaign data allowed us to identify correlation between online/offline spends and online/offline sales (e.g. seniors exposed to our promotion online triggers them to purchase via travel agents; on the flipside, the Millennial’s curiosity from seeing a digital OOH ad translates to a Google search). Thus, for an improved Total ROI, we optimized towards a 60:40 online:offline spend ratio (vs. 80:20 previously). Beyond Google/YouTube custom audiences (using search behaviour for ancillary services) and dynamic creative optimization delivering realtime, customized messaging, we further predicted buyer behavior by creating segmented lookalikes based on customers ancillary preferences, as exhibited by their behaviour on our booking site.

Results and Effectiveness
The new automated, adaptive approach countered price competition:
• Load Factor increased to 78% (vs. 76% in 2017), flying approx. 273,000 additional passengers
• Driving sales of ancillaries: 110% uplift, to RM80mil (vs. only RM38mil in 2017) Without increasing media budgets, ROMI for 2018 jumped from 7.5 to 20.5. Source: Client data

The Challenges
Consumers were in a carbuying frenzy following the “tax holiday” and subsequent SST discounting. With the launch of Proton’s new SUV delayed until December, how could we get potential buyers to holdoff on their purchases a full 2 months before it’s launched and without any cars in hand.

Insight, Strategy and the Idea
To satiate the consumer’s dealseeking mindset, we set out to sell “the best deal for a spot in the queue”, for a Proton X70. We launched Malaysia’s 1st online prebooking platform. To promote it, it was launched with a deal a 3day flash sale during which you could book the X70 for only RM99! To drive immediate action, it was crucial to create hype and anticipation around the new car as the more you see and hear something about Proton X70, the more likely you are to get in line.

Media Execution
We dominated platforms where car shoppers spend their time on:
• We teased the launch of the online booking platform 3 days before to create anticipation. This included social media, automotive websites, search and programmatic audience buying (auto intenders, in general and SUV intenders specifically)
• Launch domination: We hijacked the top 3 automotive websites with 100% SOV on car category page, search box suggestion and SUV searches. Via impact programmatic buys, we also extended this across other high traffic websites like the Lowyat forum.
• Buzz: Triggering the fearofmissingout through digitorials on automotive and classified websites like Mudah, Paultan.org, and Carbase.
• Action: To drive action, we also retargeted visitors of the X70 product page programmatically.

Results and Effectiveness
Fuelled by earned media totalling RM1.5million (5X that of paid media!), complemented by precision targeting of new car intenders, contributed to Proton achieving over 10,000 bookings online, even before the official launch of the car – that’s half of the Proton X70 annual sales target!

The Challenges
MATTA Fair, the largest travel fair is when deal hunters purchase their annual holiday packages. After the buying frenzy, the immediate period postMATTA Fair (April) would typically experience a sales dip. So, how can we reverse the trend to keep sales consistent post MATTA?

Insight, Strategy and the Idea
Our analysis showed that Post MATTA Fair, huge pool of travel intenders who engaged with us did not purchase. We further analyzed these travel intenders’ buying journey where besides price promotions, 70% of them spend between 1 – 3 minutes on ancillary pages. We saw the opportunity for an ancillary led campaign, hence “Malaysia Airlines Grand Travel Deals” was launched.

Media Execution
The ancillary led campaign went beyond just airfare discounts; it now includes up to 50% discount on hotels, children airfares, insurance and more.
1. Dynamic creative optimization (DCO): a repository of campaign materials that allowed us to trigger custom messaging and redesigned creatives (based on flight and ancillaries inventory, with realtime fare price from Google Flight Search) within a minute.
2. Switching between platforms for effectiveness: Reallocation of budgets between platforms, audience segments, and creatives that delivered a higher ROI.
3. Optimising total spends ratio: Analysing historical campaign data allowed us to identify correlation between online offline spends and online offline sales (e.g. senior travelers exposed to our promotion online triggered them to purchase via travel agents; on the flipside, the Millennial’s curiosity is piqued when he sees a digital OOH ad and proceeds to do a Google search).

Results and Effectiveness
Post MATTA
• Total website visits grew by 140% vs. post MATTA previous year
• We grow sales by 70% vs. post MATTA previous year translating into an incremental Sales volume of RM49 million.
• Total sales remained above the baseline for 2018
• Sales ROI of 115 for every RM1 in media compared to 65 ROI in 2017.

The Challenges
With the Government’s ambition to drive broadband penetration, unifi was tasked to deliver double the speed, at half the price. With the competition offering the same speed, for the same price, we had the most to lose. Worse, the unifi brand was falling out of favour with the public and outspent by its closest competitor, Maxis (by more than 6X!). How do we sustain our share of the market?

Insight, Strategy and the Idea
Besides reasserting unifi’s broadband leadership driven by brand video placements across YouTube and Facebook, we also had to drive subscriptions. However, as an utility, people almost never think about broadband. Thus, we identified 3 moments during which they are most receptive:
1. Hijack relevant life event: Setting an installation appointment is something people dread. So, we leaned into that behaviour – targeting people who WERE already arranging appointments for deliveries and installations in their homes i.e. New Home Owners
2. Hijack competitive intent: Competitive broadband brands search volumes had increased by 59% post the Minister’s announcement. So when people search for Maxis or/and TIME instead of seeing intended ads from Maxis or/and TIME, people saw our ads first.
3. Hijack competitive user attention: UniversityofLoyola research shows that color increases brand recognition by up to 80%. We do think of telco brands in colors – Digi yellow, Maxis green or Celcom blue. We leveraged on the heightened attention of users to their subscribed Internet Service Provider (ISP). Via ISP targeting, we baited users with what looks like a proposition from their current ISP, only to receive a better offer from unifi.

Media Execution
We developed a firsttomarket custom segment of “New Home Owners”, building an audience pool who have consumed content that bears resemblance to new home owners – topics like home decoration & design; bedroom, kitchen and bathroom; consumer electronics; home insurance policy; and home security – and creating a lookalike audience from there on, allowing us to reach this audience at scale. With search, we trained the AdWords tool to attack competitor keywords and cleverly injected our messaging seamlessly as part of the ad copy. Enhancing our programmatic targeting, layered with ISP, allowed us to create dynamic color ads:
• Maxis users saw a Maxis Greencolored unifi banner
• TIME users saw a TIME Pinkcolored unifi banner
• Whereas unifi and Streamyx saw unifi’s own orangecolored banner

Results and Effectiveness
Campaign delivered 31% more than planned traffic; search contributing 74% of visits to unifi website
• 41% of Maxis searchers who reacted to “maxisfied” ads, visited unifi website
• 53% of TIME searchers who reacted to “TIMEfied” ads, visited unifi website Custom banners meant:
• Competitively targeted: Engagement rate up by 2X vs brand campaigns in unifi color
• Moment targeted: “New home owner” banners outperformed standard banners in 3 key areas: Relevance: 170% lift in clickthrough rates (CTRs) + Efficiency: 42% improvement in conversion from impression to landstosite + Quality: 50% improvement in conversion from impression to leads generated Sales: Online broadband subscriptions grew by 3X, contributing towards unifi’s 50% growth of average monthly new customer signups vs. the year before. Source: Client data, MCMC

The Challenges
Consumers were in a carbuying frenzy following the “tax holiday” and subsequent SST discounting. With the launch of Proton’s new SUV delayed until December, how could we get potential buyers to holdoff on their purchases a full 2 months before it’s launched and without any cars in hand.

Insight, Strategy and the Idea
To satiate the consumer’s dealseeking mindset, we set out to sell “the best deal for a spot in the queue”, for a Proton X70. We launched Malaysia’s 1st online prebooking platform. To promote it, it was launched with a deal a 3day flash sale during which you could book the X70 for only RM99! To drive immediate action, it was crucial to create hype and anticipation around the new car as the more you see and hear something about Proton X70, the more likely you are to get in line.

Media Execution
We dominated platforms where car shoppers spend their time on:
• We teased the launch of the online booking platform 3 days before to create anticipation. This included social media, automotive websites, search and programmatic audience buying (auto intenders, in general and SUV intenders specifically)
• Launch domination: We hijacked the top 3 automotive websites with 100% SOV on car category page, search box suggestion and SUV searches. Via impact programmatic buys, we also extended this across other high traffic websites like the Lowyat forum.
• Buzz: Triggering the fearofmissingout through digitorials on automotive and classified websites like Mudah, Paultan.org, and Carbase.
• Action: To drive action, we also retargeted visitors of the X70 product page programmatically.

Results and Effectiveness
Fuelled by earned media totalling RM1.5million (5X that of paid media!), complemented by precision targeting of new car intenders, contributed to Proton achieving over 10,000 bookings online, even before the official launch of the car – that’s half of the Proton X70 annual sales target! Source: Client data