Malaysian Media Awards Winners Showcase





2014 | |

It’s Clear, It’s Clean Sponsorship by Clean & Clear

Advertiser: Johnson & Johnson
Brand: Clean & Clear
Creative Agency: Mindmade
Credits: Universal Mccann — Ramakrishnan C.N. (Senior Vice President), Chinar Joshi (Director, Strategy & Consulting), Velda Kon (Associate Director), Christina Wong (Senior Media Planner), Callie Jang (Media Planner), Michelle Lim (Senior Buyer)

The Challenge
Clean & Clear, a popular teen skin care brand witnessed continuous market share erosion, and was losing relevance with teens. Our task was to arrest sales decline, and re-stage the brand with the teens and engage them.

The Solution – Insight & Idea
Insight: Teenage is turbulent time for girls, peer pressure, academics, changing physicality, love etc are just few of the issues which teens have to deal with. Amidst all this, she finds solace and comfort in the company of her Best Friend, a friend who mirrors her life and emotions. Strategy: We decided to Sponsor Astro’s latest teen soap Sahabat. The show revolved around a group of teens and their life. The storyline was a perfect fit with C&C’s brand footprint. Our strategy was reinforce C&C’s relevance in a teen girl’s life via the usual contextual product placement but with a twist. Idea: A standard sponsorship is cumbersome process, clients and agency work together to integrate and retro fit products into storyline. A Director feels that a Product Placement though financially sound, hampers his creativity, and clients always feel that they are not getting enough $ value. The inevitable creative conflict usually results in product being introduced without context or relevance, therefore instead of feeling like a part of the script and something natural within the show, it ends up standing out like sore thumb. Media agency executed & integrated products much after the shoot was done and episode finalized.

The Execution
We used a first ever technology in Malaysia, and chose specific scenes, where we wanted to place our products. We could select exact scenes and duration, and ensure our products are seen in a contextually relevant manner, and doesn’t seem like a force fit into the script. We employed the hitherto unused technology to change the dynamics of in-show product placement. For instance we placed a C&C poster in one of the character’s room, the placement of poster worked perfectly within the environment of teen girl’s room, we were one of the posters on a wall by her bedside. The uniqueness of the placement stemmed from the fact that unlike other sponsorship where protagonists are shown holding products without context or situational requirement, our products appeared integral to character’s life. At no point did it feel forced, the script wasn’t modified neither were the camera angles decided keeping in mind the product to be shown. C&C truly integrated with the show, and made its product appear as subtly as possible, and natural teen lifestyle.

The Results
The sponsorship garnered 10.1 ROI! We successfully reached 1.042 Million of our target teens viewers. Our Facebook fan base increased by 32%. Consideration for C&C among teens reached an all time high, and the sales volume surged by an astounding 20% during campaign period!