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2021 | |

Malaysia-Airlines going beyond Price War!

Advertiser: Malaysia Airlines Berhad
Brand: Malaysia Airlines Berhad
Creative Agency: M&C Saatchi; Magna Digital
Credits: -

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Objective & Challenge
The MATTA Fair is Malaysia’s largest travel fair and every year in March, Malaysians are spoilt for choices with the cheapest airfare promoted by airlines or travel agencies. 60% of Malaysian travelers will pick the best offers and plan their annual holidays. Consequently, the immediate period postMATTA Fair would typically experience a sharp deep in sales. The objectives set by MalaysiaAirlines were to prevent the sales dip and sustain the sales volume postMATTA fair. The challenge to the agency:
• To increase the sales for MalaysiaAirlines above MATTA fair sales in the subsequent month postMATTA Fair.
• To promote air tickets which were priced 2x higher compared to MATTA Fair.

Insight & Strategy
We needed to understand why MATTA fair did not attract the balance of the 40% travel intenders. What reasons should MalaysiaAirlines create to convert these travel intenders to purchase MalaysiaAirlines products? The agency created Intelligenic – a digital performance solutions that allowed us to understand traveler’s motivation based on their online & offline purchase behaviors. We analyzed 7 different datasets to enable Intelligenic solutions:
• Aircraft seat capacity (load factor) of the various routes
• Realtime consumer journey data on the online booking site
• Lookalike modelling based on our frequent flyer database
• Audience segments travel behaviour based on booking and actual flying lead time
• Fare prices from Google Flight Search
• Online and offline travel agent sales report
• Pixel extension across the entire purchase journey, including all ancillary product pages Intelligenic analytics led us to 2 critical insights:
• Synergy between offline and online advertising
spends (creative and media): By integrating offline sales reports, we can clearly evaluate the correlation between offline and online SPENDS vs. offline and online SALES RESULTS. The discovery proofed the need to adopt a holistic view and to optimize total advertising spends not just against ONLINE sales but also OFFLINE sales.
• PostMATTA Fair travel intenders: By analyzing these potential audience full buying journey, we discovered the need to go beyond cheapest airfare to attract our “price fatigued” travelers. How? We analyzed our customer journey through MalaysiaAirlines ancillary pages (hotels, business class companion fair, business lounge access, children travel privileges, chef oncall, extra baggage allowance and pet cargo) which suggested that these
travelers are motivated by convenience and value for every Ringgit spend i.e. appreciate ancillary products beyond just basic ticket price.
Thus, we saw the opportunity for a campaign that was ancillaryled, giving birth to
the MalaysiaAirlines Travelicious campaign. The campaign strategy focused on:
• Optimize total advertising spends to maximize the reach to garner offline and online sales across all sales platform – online travel agent, IBE (Internet Booking Engine), call center, traditional travel agents.
• Building a travel package primarily based on Traveler’s purchase motivation i.e ancillary products.

Execution
This ancillaryled Travelicious campaign was launched postMATTA from April to July 2019, across 15 markets globally with ancillary promotion 50% off on hotels, business class companion fares, extra baggage allowance, discount on children airfares, pet cargo and insurance PLUS only up to 35% discount on airfare compared to 60% discount during MATTA Fair. Insights gathered from Intelligenic solutions were used for the campaign execution as well:
• Across 15 local/regional/global markets the campaign required 1500 creatives in 10 languages. Dynamic creative optimization (DCO) allowed us to optimize delivery of the best performing messaging combination – language + different types of ancillary promotion + airfare discounts that meets the respective traveler’s needs. This involved housing a repository of campaign materials that allowed us to trigger custom messaging and redesign our creatives (based on flight and ancillary inventory, with realtime fare price comparison from Google Flight Search) all automized within a minute, whilst reducing human error.
• Switching between platforms for effectiveness during the 18 weeks campaigns: Reallocation of budgets between offline (newspaper, radio, digital out of home) and online platforms, audience segments, and creatives that delivered a higher sales return on advertising investment (ROAI), ensuring realtime optimization in a cost and time efficient manner.
• Create more customized lookalike segments based on their ancillary preferences, as exhibited by their behaviors on MalaysiaAirlines booking site, which was a new discovery with Intelligenic solutions vs. traditionally Google/YouTube custom audiences search behavior.
• Optimizing total spends ratio: Analyzing historical campaign data allowed us to identify sales impact and correlation between online and offline advertising spends (e.g. senior travelers who were served MalaysiaAirlines online promotion actually bought their air travel package from travel agents) Thus, from an 80:20 onlineoffline spend ratio, we optimized towards a 60:40 ratio for an improved total Sales Return on advertising Investment. All made possible by Intelligenic!

Effectiveness
1) How media impacted the nonprice sensitive target audience? a. With ticket priced 2x higher compared to MATTA Fair, Travelicious campaign attracted 2.24 million visitors, total website visits grew by a factor of 2.17X compared to MATTA Fair. b. 71% of customers have opted for higher value tickets with ancillary promotions. 2) How media impacted MH sales performance and aircraft load factor? a. We almost tripled the sales growth by +155% compared to MATTA fair RM 55M. b. Load factor increased by +22%, and all 15 markets showed positive sales growth at an average of +29% compared to sales during MATTA fair. c. Ancillary services contributed to 35.5% of the total sales, which was +100% compared to prior and during MATTA Fair. 3 top selling ancillary products were MHHoliday Hotel Package Extra Baggage  AllowanceChildren travel privileges 3) How media impacted the sales return on advertising investment? a. We achieved all time high sales return on advertising investment of 128x (every RM1 media spend in offline and online media delivered 128x in sales value) compared to MATTA Fair 119x. 4) How media impacted MalaysiaAirlines brand overall? b. Brand Buzz increased +44% (from 9.6 during MATTA to 13.9 during Travelicious) c. Consumer perception about the MH Brand Value increased positively by +31% (from 11 during MATTA to 14.6 during Travelicious) With Intelligenic solutions, MalaysiaAirlines can clearly own a full service value carrier position instead of cheap tickets competition.

2021 | |

Business Analytics Engine – Marketing Mix Modelling on steroids!

Advertiser: QSR Stores Sdn Bhd
Brand: KFC
Creative Agency: Reprise
Credits: -

Objective & Challenge

With food & beverage competition and competitors coming up fast, business was affected. Making the situation worse, Covid hit Malaysian just when we were recovering. With sales affected fast, media budgets also dropped fast but we still had the same target to hit. How on earth were we going to do it?”

Insight & Strategy
Naturally as the media agency, we anticipated extreme optimisation of investment. Clients would want to be assured that we buy into most efficient and effective media that drive sales. Most importantly how do we instil the confidence into KFC that our media plans have been optimised that would also promise return of sales to the business? Our strategy is to leverage Business Analytics Engine (BAE), media agency’s analytical tool to assess media performance, measuring them against business KPI Sales and to create a media strategy that drives sales.

Execution
Using the concept of Market Mix Modelling, BAE helps decompose marketing and nonmarketing factors role in sales contribution for the past 104 weeks. We aimed to : identify media channels that are the most effective and efficient in driving sales further optimize these mediums in future campaigns In building a robust model that can explain sales drivers, all factors that may affect sales in any way were considered namely marketing spends, competitor marketing activities, website visits, search trend, brand health metrics such as buzz/ talkability, consideration, recommendation, ads awareness etc, launch/ promo startdate, seasonality amongst others. With a robust modelling plot, agency studied the impact of media investments to sales by week, by medium by product. The final suggested media mix is a result of a few rounds of simulations and optimisations towards sales. Firstly, we input data of the recommended plan down to detailed such as weekly media investments by medium and get a predictive sales number. Next we optimised the plan by shifting budget amongst the recommended media mix with an ultimate aim to get the best sales result with same media investments. Most often, medium that contributes most to sales will likely see adjustment in investment at the expense of those lesser contributing ones. These results are then matched back to the actual sales received on a weekly basis. For weeks that overperform, we analysed the performance based on media allocation. For weeks that underperformed, we noted on the weekly behaviour other sales drivers. Agency would run the model and optimise the plan on a weekly basis realtime to drive effectiveness and sales. Our analysis also covered the effect of preCovid,during Covid and postCovid and how are the respective impact on KFC sales including  which medium that are more effective and efficient in each different phases. So let’s say, the BAE model needs to output a plan starting Nov for 8 weeks with a media budget of RM1million and a sales KPI of RM100 million. To achieve this, BAE has advised us to tweak the current mix to Digital 49% (+4%), TV 40% (+1%), OOH 11% (minus 5%). Today, agency has in hand hygiene level media spends, cost optimization and estimated sales return after rigorous study on the sales impact. We have been also running systemized test and learn models to further improvise and drive confidence amongst clients.

Effectiveness
Across a period of 60 weeks, our recalibrated exercise improved the model’s confidence by another 4.5% which is huge given KFC’s billion dollar business. The model accuracy against actual sales are within healthy +/ 10% range and as a result of this, we are able to advise client on approximately 8% to 10% savings for every campaign given our sales prediction. Through optimisation exercise, agency improved the ROI by +52% in Q4’20. (by means of spending lesser media dollar while enjoying better effectiveness of contribution to sales)

2021 | |

Malaysia’s First Ever 12-Hour Virtual Beauty Festival

Advertiser: L’Oreal Malaysia
Brand: L’Oreal Luxury
Creative Agency: IDOTYOU
Credits: -

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Objective & Challenge
Prior to the pandemic, more than 95% sales of luxe brands stemmed from offline, but lockdown rules made them untenable and an ordinary digital activation would not excite the luxe shoppers in the same way. We need a breakthrough formula to disrupt the typical mode of live streaming.

Insight & Strategy
Luxe shoppers love beauty events, the joy of browsing through attractive deals, delightful packaging and interacting with experts. Not forgetting the attentive service and personalised consultation, which usually lead to higher impulse purchases and basket value. However, COVID19 has disrupted the joy. While the retail joy shifted from offline to online, we wanted to go further and disrupt the ordinary mode of live streaming which have developed over the COVID19 year. It was a challenge to bring all 8 luxe brands under 1 virtual festival, but the biggest challenge is to make this 12hour virtual festival interesting for people to tune in, to engage with the brands and to ultimately buy the product during the festival. We creatively tied in Facebook live streaming and messenger capabilities to simulate a physical event with impeccable customer service, digitally. An exceptional virtual beauty experience was delivered, featuring celebrities and influencers hosting giveaways and flash sales. We deployed an endtoend social commerce and shopper engagement platform within the messenger that allow shoppers to use the brand’s dedicated hashtag to trigger a private conversation on messenger. The customer can opt for self shopping or to interact with a real life beauty advisor personally, place orders and make payment all within the chat. This sped up the conversion process while the purchase intent is high, driven by the live excitements simulated after a physical event. The virtual event offered shoppers curated content mirroring a physical event, in the comfort of their own home while mix modelling of bot and real life advisors gave the assisted joy of physical shopping.

Execution
To bring 8 brands to Facebook live all within 12 hours, audience precision was key to ensure that the awareness of the event is widely spread to the targeted luxe audience. To ensure we were able to reach and recruit high interest audience, we deployed a CRM and CRM LookaLike audience strategy, which have contributed to higher attendance and conversion rate. Other channel consisting of PR content and print titles were also used to boost event awareness beyond Facebook platform. Pre event Activation
• To build the excitement of the festival, we consolidated the voice of all brands into one event hub page 10 days prior to the actual event
• We increased signups to individual brand pages by highlighting the limited time promotions and exciting lineups of KOLs, giveaways, tips, and tutorials during their respective brand show.
• To collected leads for each brand via messenger ads
• Boost PR content and use offline
print titles to extend the reach beyond the Facebook platform Event Day
• Drive live stream views via video ads 30 minutes prior to brand’s live session
• Engage audience with flash sales and prizes to stay through the session
• High persuasive content such as crash test, efficacy proof, live demo and consultation are included to deepen brand engagement and drive instant conversion
• Activated social commerce triggering a personalized conversation via Messenger. Customers could then interact with a beauty advisor for a one on one consultation, place orders and
follow guided assistance to make payment. PostEvent Retargeting
• Following the event, we deployed different remarketing strategies for purchased users and cart abandoner to drive the effectiveness on conversion.

Effectiveness
The first ever 12 hour virtual beauty festival achieved an overwhelming response amidst the pandemic. It has made a feature in Forbes.com and listed as Facebook Business Case Study: Integration of social commerce. Strategic Business Achievement One month’s worth of online sales in 24 hours 5x omni customer penetration vs. YAGO +95% sell out
weekoverweek 3x uplift of transactions vs. daily average 6x conversion rate higher than legacy channel Total leads generated at 94% above set target Media achievement: Activated over 15,000 chats Reached 2.6 million people 47,000 live video views 85 times higher engagement (4.28%) vs. global beauty industry standard (0.05%) 12% post engagement rate “Experimenting with new sales formats always requires meticulous planning and planning an allday virtual beauty festival with multiple brands was an incredibly ambitious effort. Thanks to our partners and agencies, we were able to host an outstanding live event that deepened our engagement with our audience and boosted sales. It was a great success!” Eda Lim, Head of Digital and eCommerce, L’Oreal Luxury Malaysia.

2021 | |

iPhone SE Launch

Advertiser: Maxis
Brand: Maxis
Creative Agency: Leo Burnett
Credits: -

Objective & Challenge
Device sales is Maxis’ direct source of revenue and our ambition is to be the leader in device discovery & purchase. We were experiencing a rapid decline in device sales due to Covid19. At the same time, the launch of
iPhone SE was around the corner and we see an opportunity to ride on this campaign to address the challenge. The goal is to reverse the decline in device sales trend and increase brand preference and purchase intent.

Insight & Strategy
GOING BEYOND EARLY ADOPTERS For major device launches, we’d typically target Early Adopters: people who are obsessed with getting the latest tech before anyone else. But we had two problems: 1. iPhone SE is a midyear model: With money being tight, they’d rather save up for flagships with breakthrough features like iPhone 12. 2. Smaller group: Only 13.5% of our audience would be early adopters. We needed to maximise sales impact to reverse the drastic sales dip. So, we casted our net wider with the Early Majority (40% of our audience). Early majorities pride themselves in finding smart lifehacks to keep their family running while stretching their dollar. But would prefer to see these ideas and technology “vetted” first by someone they trust, like tech
reviewers. DEMAND TOWARDS INTERNET AND TECH GADGETS DURING THE PANDEMIC INCREASES While household spends decreased, we observed that our audience spent more on essentials that’ll keep their families going during the pandemic. Internet usage jumped 23.5% in the first week of MCO and 32.1% by week two, as Malaysians saw it as an essential tool to stay connected, entertained, working and learning. Besides that, we also noticed a surge in search interest on laptops, tablets and computer peripherals – devices they saw as essential to keep them connected – but not smartphones. Unfortunately, industry reports showed that this surge in internet usage as well as intent in laptops and tablets, would not translate to an increased spend in smartphones, which were still seen as nonessential luxuries. OUR STRATEGY: MAKE SMARTPHONES ESSENTIAL TOO Even though
upgrading smartphones were not topofmind, we knew people were focused on digital solutions to keep their lives going during the MCO. We saw this as our opportunity to show consumers how a reliable smartphone on a stable network was a smart investment to keep you connected during tough times. Especially with a network that makes owning a smartphone less of a financial strain with easy ownership schemes like Zerolution.
Execution
SMARTER COLLABORATION WITH TECH KOLS Instead of just doing iPhone SE ads, we decided to go where consumers went to get smart tips to stay connected digitally: tech influencers. Overall YouTube watchtime in Malaysia saw a growth of 35% and specifically for consumer electronic videos, it doubled compared to same period in 2019. 7 out of the top 10 YouTube channels viewed were also from Malaysia. We saw this as our opportunity to partner with the top local tech KOLs like Smashpop, Amanz, SoyaCincau, Wiser.my and TricycleTV, to showcase why getting a device like the iPhone SE with Maxis is a smart choice during tough times. To drive relevance with people with diverse needs, these tech KOLs produce a total of 6 longform content and 20 bitesized videos covering various angles, showing how the iPhone SE on Malaysia’s No. 1 4G network was the smarter choice for all your working, streaming, learning, gaming, socialising, connecting to loved ones and content creating needs. SMARTER REACH WITH 100% SOV ON TECH CHANNELS To make sure Malaysians will discover these videos not only when searching for iPhone SE but any tech related content, we dominated with 100% shareofvoice in top 19 local tech channels through YouTube Roadblock and bought global tech lineup with over 100 global tech YouTube channels. Throughout the campaign period we served the bite sized content as prerolls by batches to keep the messaging fresh and multiangled, endorsed by our local tech KOL collaborators to
drive home the key features of iPhone SE, our toprated network, as well as our Zerolution easy device ownership plan. With effective usage of the video content, we were able to maximise reach and widen the funnel for
consideration and conversions. All ads from the videos to our display, social and search ads led to our Maxis Online Store, where customers were able to purchase the iPhone SE seamlessly and conveniently, without the hassle of leaving their home as the phone will be delivered to their doorstep.
Effectiveness
1. HALT DECLINING DEVICE SALES TREND Result: We successfully reversed the device sales decline by May 2020 and exceeded June 2019′s sellthrough rate in June 2020. • NORMALISED TOTAL SELLTHROUGH TO MAY 2019 LEVELS 277% increase in sales in May 2020 versus April 2020 helped us reverse the decline and bring our sales level to May 2019 number • Exceeded Q2 2019 sellthrough rates in June 2020: We exceeded device sellthrough rates by 30% in June 2020, vs June 2019. Placing us back on a positive sales trend for Q3 2020 • A big boost in iPhone sales: iPhone sales increased by 254% in May 2020 from April 2020 • A positive spillover effect on Android sales: Android sales grew by 291% in May 2020 from April 2020 at a time of no major
Android launches, proving that our approach didn’t just help with iPhone SE sales.

2021 | |

Adopt A Keg Campaign

Advertiser: CARLSBERG MARKETING SDN BHD (M4CMA)
Brand: Carlsberg
Creative Agency: Grey Advertising Malaysia
Credits: -

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Objective & Challenge
Since Movement Control Order (MCO) was enforced in Malaysia due to the increasing Coronavirus cases nationwide, forcing everyone to stay at home to prevent any further increase in infection cases. Most of all, Malaysians are no longer allowed to hang out in pubs and restaurants and this enforcement has caused the entire food and beverage industry to a massive halt and immediately changed the industry landscape. As an effect, many business owners were still trying to figure out how to deal with the situation especially with bars and pubs falling under grey area of being essentials or not. Everything happened too fast for business owners to even figure out a sustainable business recovery plan.

Insight & Strategy
Malaysians contribute to save local pubs and restaurants during CMCO! On 1st May 2020, the government moved the status of MCO to Conditional MCO (CMCO) and has enacted that pubs and restaurant businesses will be operating for Malaysians to dine in with restricted timing applied. And by then, many business owners are already struggling to cope with their losses as CMCO was put in place and despite the government’s greenlight for resuming economic activities including F&B industry. Carlsberg saw this as a great opportunity and worked with all the owners to create the very FIRST and UNIQUE program “Adopt A Keg”Carlsberg that would drive Malaysians back to pubs and restaurants to help owners regain their business. The biggest challenge for any F&B is moving their food and drinks stock or else they stand a greater loss. Especially for beer, keeping kegs fresh is a challenge when bars are closed leaving business owners in a tight spot. This initiative rewards consumers when they purchase Carlsberg beer for home consumption with free draught beer they can redeem when the MCO is lifted and outlets welcome customers again. Consumers can fill up their very own “virtual keg” on the Carlsberg website, by simply scanning the receipt and barcodes from their purchases of Carlsberg Danish Pilsner and
Carlsberg Smooth Draught cans or bottles. Once the virtual keg is full consumers will be gifted two beers on the house, courtesy of Carlsberg Malaysia, redeemable via a QR code at participating F&B outlets of their choice when the establishment reopens. Redemptions for the AdoptaKeg initiative are available from June 1 to August 31 or while stocks last and are limited to the first 10,000 consumers, with a total of 20,000 glasses of Carlsberg beer to be given away. It’s all about timing! We had the shortest time to turn this around and push “Adopt a Keg” initiative in full speed into the market is through Online and Ecommerce, as the momentum of using Digital as a key platform to sustain and grow business. Digital was needed because it is the fastest way to turn things around and help the business owners survive with this initiative. We have taken the digital approach to create awareness on how Malaysian can help the businesses with Carlsberg’s innovative initiative in pushing the number of kegs to be redeemed.

Execution
With the conditional movement control order – many businesses are allowed to operate and Malaysian are able to enjoy a pint of beer in any of Carlsberg’s partner establishments, however Malaysians are still advised to stay at home to prevent any virus spreading. With this Malaysian’s behavior – tackling into digital sphere is a must in pushing key media initiatives. FBIG and Programmatic were pivotal in driving high awareness and creating the perception that Malaysians is able to contribute to sustaining Malaysia’s bars and pubs, followed by different assets on how Malaysian can help the bars by participating in the Carlsberg FIRST innovative initiative – buy a Carlsberg beer, scan the barcodes to fill up the Virtual Keg in Carlsberg website and once the virtual keg is full then consumers can redeem their glasses of beer when their favorite bars and pubs reopen. At the second phase of the campaign, remarketing has been implemented on new creatives to create a reminder on the campaign’s message and encourage participation of the initiative. Hence, this creates a sequential campaign story to createcuriosity sparks. We used both content publishers on both languages – Chinese and Eng and digital press to magnify the communication by pivoting empathy angle on the message of “helping struggle business” to entice Malaysian to join the initiative. Tackling high traffic digital press website to cover mass audiences in Malaysia to expand the awareness of this campaign. After executing this plan, we have extended this Carlsberg initiative to support Liverpool Fan Club campaign highlighting Liverpool winning Premier League for the first time in 30 years due to overwhelming participation to get the Carlsberg keg.

Effectiveness
The campaign has achieved 2.14M reach with the total views of 1.92M of this campaign. In less than 3 days, 1000 customers had sign up to the program and 93% successfully redeemed their beer with 75% finds “Adopt a Keg” easy to use and navigate on the website. In less than 3 weeks, a total of 20,000 glasses of Carlsberg beer were given away! And the campaign had to be halted for “refill” due to overwhelming response from the public as the KEGS were all successfully ADOPTED!