Malaysian Media Awards Winners Showcase





2013 | |

Nestle gets 108,000 Copywriters for its Centennial Campaign

Advertiser: Nestle Products Sdn Bhd
Brand: Nestle Corporate
Creative Agency: McCann Erickson
Credits: Cindy Chia (Director, Client Leadership), Lim Suk Yee (Manager), Kelly Liow (Executive), Audrey Low (Associate Director, Client Leadership), Yvonne Tan (Senior Executive), Esther Loke (Executive), Christine Poe (Manager)

Challenge
100 years of success and making its way into millions of homes and hearts is great cause for celebration. However, large-scale 100th-year celebrations marking this milestone may be seen as “pompous”, risking negative sentiments from consumers. Our challenge was to reinforce Nestle’s longstanding reputation, heritage and success without sounding arrogant.

Solution
Consumers are always more interested in stories about people than stories about companies. Therefore, we decided that the “Nestle 100 years” campaign should be co-created by the people of Malaysia, with their own stories as the building blocks. Of course, consumers are always fascinated by social influencers’ stories, so what better way to kick-start consumer participation than to get social influencers to share their Nestle stories.

Execution
We first turned to major print publications and convinced editors of various columns to share their Nestle stories in their style (sports story by sports writer Zalina Som, comic illustration by comic editor Reggie Lee, etc). These stories appealed to all walks of life and triggered Malaysians to reminisce their own experiences. At the end of each article, readers were encouraged to share their own stories with the publications or at “Nestle 100 Years” microsite.

Results
The nation responded with 108,000 Nestle stories within 3 months of campaign, making it the largest crowd-sourced brand campaign in Malaysian history. Nestle’s corporate image improved 24% post campaign and 87% of Malaysians felt a stronger connection with Nestle. (Source: MillwardBrown). Nestle closed the year with +12% in stock price.