Malaysian Media Awards Winners Showcase

The Challenge
We were tasked to build a fanbase in a category that has low engagement. Our main competitor, having established themselves on Facebook much longer, had 50k fans. The client set us a target of 100,000! To make it even more challenging, we were not allowed to give out any incentives.

The Solution – Insight & Idea
Without any carrots such as giving away free gifts, vouchers or contests etc, we needed a strategy that gave users a reason to “Like” us, not for the incentives, but because they genuinely wanted to. The key objective was to demonstrate that we can add-value to our audience’s needs. Dr Robert Cialdini, Professor Of Psychology & Marketing at Arizona State University, is the author of “50 Scientifically Proven Ways To Be Persuasive”. A simple persuasion strategy highlighted in his book talked about starting with smaller and more manageable groups. This is then followed by testing various messages to assess which ones resonated best with which group of people. We adopted this method in our Facebook media buy. Instead of sending out generic messages to a single defined audience, we segregated them into smaller groups based on their demographics, interests and behaviour. This allowed us to gain better insights to what they were interested in and customize communication to each of the groups. Then, off we went to the drawing board. A wide variety of content was conceptualized, ranging from renovation tips, colour applications and DIY videos, to product updates and latest trends in interior design.

The Execution
We grouped our audience into 5 different segments. In each of the segments, the audience was categorized according to their interests and behavior. Examples of unique traits included the following: 1. Those who actively look for ways to improvise or do things differently. 2. Early adopters of new products. 3. Independent individuals who preferred to manage things themselves. 4. Looks and design driven consumers. 5. The family men / women. For each of the key traits we grouped and named them Innovator, Trend Setter, DIY Enthusiast, Artist and Mummy & Daddy. Together with the creative agency, we devised and matched the relevant communication to each of the segments. A total of 62 ad copies were created, catering to the different needs of our audience. For example, we provided out-of-the-box ideas to trigger the interest of Innovators, gave design tips to the Artists, and educated Mummies & Daddies on how our chemical free product range is not harmful to their children. The campaign was rolled out in 9 bursts across the year, from May to December.

The Results
The targeted 100,000 fans were achieved four months early and utilizing only half of the allocated budget! Total number of fans achieved by December 2013 was 151,365, which was 51% higher than our KPI. Advertising on Facebook usually sees a conversion rate of 0.05%. Ours was 0.28% which is a 460% improvement, indicating that individualized communication to smaller groups is more effective.