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2014 | |

How TV helped AirAsia Reach Out To Young Malaysians

Advertiser: AirAsia Bhd
Brand: AirAsia
Creative Agency: Woohoo Pictures and Astro TV
Credits: Carat Malaysia — Darren Yuen (General Manager), Gilbert Vicente (Business Director), Michelle Wee (Planning Director), Jennifer Pok (Senior Implementer)

The Challenge
AirAsia offers low fares, widest network and most frequencies of flight. However, Malaysians are not traveling as often as they should. From our study, we identified the lowest hanging fruit as Malay students, who enjoy roadtrips with friends. How do we entice them to travel more and fly with AirAsia?

The Solution – Insight & Idea
We learned that while Malay students love travelling, they have many other leisure or social activities that they do with their friends. They think that air travel is very costly, more so if they travel as a group. Hence, they mainly spend most of their time socializing and ‘lepak-ing’ with their friends. The main topic of their conversation is the celebrity they follow closely and wish to experience what these celebrities experience. Additionally, apart from socializing with friends, they spend most of their time on TV for entertainment, particularly content about their favorite celebrity. They also go online to catch-up on celebrity news, particularly on the celebrities’ social pages. Based on these insights, our strategy was to leverage on popular celebrities to inspire young Malays to fly with AirAsia. How? By creating a travelogue program in Bahasa to connect with them. Currently all travel programs available on TV are either in English or Chinese. Aside from using the local language, we want content that is fun, bold and inspiring to motivate them to live the life they’ve always been talking and dreaming about. Our idea? AirAsia Destinasi Ria – a celebrity-packed travelogue reality challenge ala Amazing Race!

The Execution
This travelogue reality program featured popular celebrities taking up a “restricted budget” challenge in a destination they have not been to. The challenge itself infuses AirAsia’s core USPs of lowest fares, widest network and most travel frequencies. Each episode featured experiences that appealed to our audience such as adventure, food, shopping and photography. There were a total of 13 destinations in 13 episodes featuring different celebrities experiencing different destinations, with the baton passed on to the next person to mark the breadth of AirAsia’s destinations. The ‘restricted budget’ helps to signify AirAsia’s lowest fares and convince Malay students that travelling can be done with a shoe-string budget. Since this is a first-time experience for the celebrities, they gladly shared photos and comments on their Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages, resulting in extended presence and reach. We partnered with Astro TV and reached 6.6 million Malay young adults through their top rating Malay channels Ria, Prima and Warna. Additionally, we were able to gain access to Astro’s large celebrity pool, ensuring star value for the program.

The Results
Sales for the featured destination increase by 13% within 2 weeks of each episode. Social media pages of each celebrity posting had an average of 700 likes, clearly showing a strong following to the program and the content. With an investment of RM 300k, the ROI of 10x, we strongly believe that this approach on TV had successfully convinced the Young Malaysian to place travel as one of their top distractions.

2014 | |

F&N Fun Flavours Puts Unique Branded Fun and Flavour Into Recipes this Ramadhan

Advertiser: F&N Interflavine Pte Ltd
Brand: F&N Fun Flavours
Creative Agency: -
Credits: UNIVERSAL McCANN — Chai Yen Yen (Business Director), Elsa Fong (Associate Director), Cecilia Wong (Senior Buyer), Jennifer Soo (Senior Planner), Eunice Lian (Planner) F&N Interflavine Pte Ltd — Jenny Wong (Head-Regional Brand Development), Lorraine Tan (Senior Marketing Manager), Stephanie Wong (Senior Brand Manager), Patricia Lee (Brand Manager), Selena Tan (Brand Manager)

The Challenge
Raya typically represents the highest peak for Fun Flavours with advertising campaign starting few days before. For years, we avoided Ramadhan as it was impossible to “Buka Puasa” with gassy drinks. Not wanting to lose huge volumes again, we needed to make Fun Flavours relevant to Malay moms during Ramadhan.

The Solution – Insight & Idea
INSIGHTS: Ramadhan is a time for religious communal activities with people gathering to “Buka Puasa” together. And for 30 days Malay moms will be busy preparing meals that normally comprises of sweet drinks, savoury dishes and desserts, but often lamenting what to cook next. STRATEGY: Fun Flavours decided to inspire cooking for Ramadhan, showing our consumers how to prepare a complete meal of firm favourites during the holy month. We had to demonstrate that Fun Flavours can be more than just a gassy drink, but also an important element for preparing dishes and desserts. Most importantly, it can be a drink that is easy to consume after a whole day of fasting. IDEA: Instead of just sponsoring yet another cooking programme and hoping that consumers will associate Fun Flavours with Ramadhan, we decided to create our very own Cooking show, Ini Caranya (This Is The Way). It was a cooking show that demonstrated how Fun Flavours can be used creatively and in ways they never thought possible, not just as Ramadhan drinks but for food preparation too.

The Execution
Working with Media Prima, we engaged the popular Chef Ismail, who Malay moms love to watch and follow. Chef Ismail took viewers on a journey of cooking discovery, teaching them how to prepare Ramadhan drinks and meals. In one episode, a stressed Diyana had to impress her future mom-in- law with a “Buka Puasa” spread. She bumps into Chef Ismail in the supermarket who offered help and they start shopping for ingredients including the all-important, F&N drinks. At home, Diyana was thought how to prepare “Acar Buah” with F&N Orange & “Therapy Cocktail” with F&N Ginger Ale. Keeping to the integrity of the story-flow and yet making F&N the hero,we were mindful not to be blatant. Product placements were strategically and seamlessly planned. For viewers who missed the show, they were still able to prepare F&N Ramadhan drinks via the easy-to- follow instructional TV guide. This 30 minute programme was anchored on TV3,over four Mondays at 5pm. To strengthen our connection, we intentionally chose the 5pm slot, catching moms just before “Buka Puasa” cooking preparation.

The Results
Spontaneous brand recall surged by 4% to 83% vs same period last year. In just 4 weeks, consumption increased by staggering 42% vs same period last year. This had eventually led to increase in sales by 7%. All in all, this integrated effort did not only managed to get F&N Fun Flavours back in touch with its core Malay segment, it had also successfully injected humour and spread cheer across 2.48 million Malays nationwide.

2014 | |

F&N Ultimate, DIY Fun Kit Infuses Comedy on TV

Advertiser: F&N Interflavine Pte Ltd
Brand: F&N Fun Flavours
Creative Agency: -
Credits: UNIVERSAL McCANN — Chai Yen Yen (Business Director), Elsa (FongAssociate Director), Cecilia Wong (Senior Buyer), Jennifer Soo (Senior Planner), Eunice Lian (Planner), Pollyanna George Joseph (Project Manager); F&N Interflavine Pte Ltd — Jenny Wong (Head-Regional Brand Development), Lorraine Tan (Senior Marketing Manager), Stephanie Wong (Senior Brand Manager), Patricia Lee (Brand Manager), Selena Tan (Brand Manager)

The Challenge
F&N Fun Flavours was under attack by an influx of health-oriented drink options and this had threatened the brand at various levels from Awareness to Penetration to Sales. The challenge was to rethink the brand’s approach to reignite our core Malay drinkers.

The Solution – Insight & Idea
INSIGHTS: Survey revealed that Malaysians are working more compared to other countries. Hence, they are constantly looking for a good laugh to relieve stress. STRATEGY: We know that comedic genre was highly popular among Malays because of the success of programs like Raja Lawak. Hence, the mission was to inject humour back into people’s lives. But we didn’t want to merely sponsor an existing prank show, we wanted to involve the consumers. IDEA: In the hands of the media agency, this ultimately led to the inception of F&N Fun Flavours Ultimate FUN Kit – the nation’s first ever, DIY Prank kit. The idea was to put consumers right at the heart of all the action, executing their hilarious prank suggestions on-camera for a light- hearted, humor-infused experience. We provided consumers with the tools and platform to carry out the pranks, capturing the most humorous highlights in a top entertainment TV programme. In association with Media Prima, we successfully worked with their TV Hosts who were actually popular Radio DJs as well. We seamlessly brought together TV Hosts and consumers to co-create an entertaining and engaging content. Consumers were also the actors, and their unsuspecting friends and families became the “victims”.

The Execution
In the pursuit of Fun, we identified HotTV, a top entertainment TV programme hosted by fun-loving HotFM DJs to anchor our campaign. For 3 weeks, the TV Hosts / DJs drove participation enthusiastically on the programme. They asked viewers if they knew of anyone who needed a little cheer and how they planned to prank that person. Then we worked with selected winners to bring alive the prank. In one of the prank, a young man and his friends drove to a cafe. Whilst enjoying teh-ais, an F&N “game crew” comprising popular actress, Neelofa set up a game booth around his car. Imagine his surprise to find his car wrapped bright orange, decorated with F&N products and was given away as the game’s main prize! The initial shock experienced by the poor guy quickly changed to a fun surprise with laughter all around. All winning pranks were later aired on prime time on HotTV for all to enjoy!

The Results
All in all, this integrated effort did not only manage to get F&N Fun Flavours back in touch with its core Malay segment, it also successfully injected humour and spread cheer across 3.13 million Malays nationwide. Spontaneous brand recall surged by 5% to 80% vs same period last year. In just 4 weeks, consumption experienced 73% vs same period last year. This had eventually led to sales growth by +82%.

2014 | |

The Malaysians’ Wonderland

Advertiser: Samsung
Brand: Samsung GALAXY Note II
Creative Agency: LiquidThread, Leo Burnett
Credits: LiquidThread — Siti Khairuddin (Associate Director – Brand Connections), Asreena Ramdan (Senior Project Executive); Andrea Samuel (Planning Manager)

The Challenge
Samsung GALAXY Note II entered the market with a strong proposition, “Be Creative”. GALAXY Note II is an enabler for users to explore the world of creativity, to stay ahead of the game; however, many fail to see the phone suitable for themselves, but more for creative individuals.

The Solution – Insight & Idea
We believe that everyone has a creative tool that they carry with them every day – our eyes. We see the world and record images every day. Our solution, “Malaysians’ Wonderland” was to put creativity into the hands of ordinary people – to get them to tell how they see Malaysia as a wonderland. This allowed the audience to discover and demonstrate how the Note II evoked their inner senses and allowed them to “Be Creative”. Building on the success of the first project – the award-winning Sparkle Project; Samsung and Yuna embarked on a journey aided by the GALAXY Note II, bringing everything special about Malaysia to life. GALAXY Wonderland was to be a musical voyage brought to life on Samsung’s latest flagship, the GALAXY Note II, and celebrates Malaysia’s identity through its culture, places, and art. Yuna was to once again work with a host of creative collaborators as well as her fans to paint a Malaysian Wonderland through the eyes of her people.

The Execution
Yuna’s journey in GALAXY Wonderland will be featured in an eight part, 30-minutes travelogue series on Astro Ria, where she explore the stories submitted by Malaysians in finding inspiration for her song. The GALAXY Wonderland got Malaysians to re-discover Malaysia. The series was hosted by Yuna’s friends – Narmi and Suhaili, along with their GALAXY Note IIs, they went around Malaysia and interpreted what Malaysians saw – from a different perspective. What was once something many Malaysians have taken for granted, is now re- discovered and explored through a different take, and the result was enchantingly beautiful. From an abandoned local industry like sea fishing to the forgotten Kelly’s castle. The 8 part series contributed to the inspiration of Yuna’s new music video, where this music video was shared online. Malaysians saw what they often took for granted through the lenses of the GALAXY Note II. They saw how beautiful things can be once you open up your mind which was exactly mimics GALAXY Note II’s proposition “Be Creative.”

The Results
The 8 series attracted over 1,146,000 views on Astro Ria across 8 weeks. These videos were watched by over 30,000 YouTubers – with no paid media support. Yuna’s Galaxy Wonderland music video and ‘the making of’ garnered over 690,000 views on YouTube. GALAXY Note II’s search index jumped by 83 points.

2014 | |

Creating the 1st ever online comedy series for a fuel brand

Advertiser: PETRONAS
Brand: PETRONAS PRIMAX
Creative Agency: -
Credits: Zenith Media — Sandeep Mark Joseph (Head Of Digital), Tan Chieu Mei (Digital Manager), Fatin Shakira (Associate Director, Content), Law Erng Mei (Digital Manager), Aimi Sofina Sulong (Digital Executive), Chan Yuet Wah (General Manager), Toh Chyi Lin (Senior Media Planner)

The Challenge
PETRONAS PRIMAX fuel was contesting closely with Shell, its main competitor in the retail fuel market. PETRONAS had created equity with car enthusiasts via banner advertisements on LiveLifeDrive (LLD), one of the leading auto sites. However, as multiple competitors featured on this site, how could PETRONAS PRIMAX stand out?

The Solution – Insight & Idea
Key insights that guided us: 1. Buying fuel is a habitual low involvement activity. Consumers are more interested in cars and online car content. So PETRONAS would have to ride on the consumers’ interest in cars to gain attention and highlight its benefits of performance and fuel efficiency. 2. Car sites need refreshing content, to catch the attention of car buffs who have multiple sources of information available to them from around the world courtesy online channels. Humour was one possible way to stand out. 3. Gen Y doesn’t favour hard- sell, but prefer word of mouth (Nielsen). Hence we decided to create “Laughing Gas”, a first of its kind in the fuel category. Instead of placing our branded content on TV, which would be more expensive and harder to connect with Gen Y, we decided to go online, to extend the content’s shelf life and affordability. Hosted by the effervescent Daphne Iking, Laughing Gas features two kings of Malaysian comedy, Razif Hashim and Vince Chong, as drivers demonstrating practical, fuel-saving driving tips. Utilizing a driver versus driver format, Laughing Gas would navigate away from typical mileage challenges to illustrate PRIMAX’s superiority, infusing the proceedings with huge dollops of humour.

The Execution
“Laughing Gas” format 1. Shot on various roads and locations throughout Klang Valley, reflecting real driving situations. 2. Comedians contested fuel-efficiency challenges, against rush hour and other difficulties. Losing driver was penalized with a dare at designated PETRONAS stations. 3. Drivers were scored on how quickly they could complete the challenge and their fuel efficiency during the drive. 4. Challenges included: driving to KLIA via different routes, Amazing Race style clue hunt, drivers versus editors of LiveLifeDrive, working with fuel experts and more. Branding for PETRONAS 1. Each episode began and ended in a PETRONAS fuel station, and featured various PETRONAS-branded moments. 2. As drivers competed, the topic of fuel efficiency and their driving qualities that helped increase fuel efficiency with PRIMAX were regularly highlighted. 3. Humorous stance created goodwill amongst viewers. This also created conversations about fuels, which are more influential and credible with Gen Y. Placement: 1. Laughing Gas was placed on LiveLifeDrive, Carlist and YouTube, magnifying reach. 2. To create engagement, banners, editorials and fuel calculators were deployed on LiveLifeDrive and Carlist.

The Results
Laughing Gas was a riotous success, generating more than 272,000 cumulative views, across 5 episodes initially. Viewing is growing daily,6 months after campaign completed. Impressions served exceeded 4.2 million. Media ROI of 5x exceeded expectations. Most importantly, PRIMAX sales grew by 4% during this period. Laughing Gas had successfully created history in the category, with the first long format branded humour content online!