Malaysian Media Awards Winners Showcase

The Challenge
Fuel companies were facing widespread backlash from consumers due to soaring fuel prices in September 2013. Social media was flooded with negative conversations about fuel prices that affected sales. The task: dilute negative aspects and reach loyalists to increase sales. How could we use social media effectively?

The Solution – Insight & Idea
Consumers live in a cluttered media environment. We knew that we needed a strategy that would capture their attention. Our insights: 1. In today’s world, social media has empowered consumers to play an active role in co-creating content. It provides them a platform to create, share, and recommend customized content. Hence, instead of the brand creating content and forcing consumers to watch that content, we wanted to co-create content with consumers for PETRONAS. 2. We knew that celebrities aroused different emotions with different groups of PETRONAS users. While some consumers love celebrities, and follow them online, others are skeptical, and see them as insincere and commercialized. Therefore, we segmented our media strategy on social media: 1) Turning non-PETRONAS users to PETRONAS’ fans, using celebrities’ pull factor. We wanted to deploy star power to create interest. 2) Making existing loyal PETRONAS users into active advocators: more trusting of their own opinions and the opinions of their peers. Above all, we wanted fans to drive the activity, not celebrities. We created a social media driven contest that will only work with the presence and action from fans in FuelledbyFans, PoweredbyPRIMAX. Celebrities were chosen on the basis of their social media strength.

The Execution
This fan-fuelled campaign had 3 phases: Phase 1: Fans on social media were invited by their 5 favourite celebrities to participate in the contest where they would be the stars. Fans had to make a purchase at PETRONAS stations to participate. Content shared on social platforms encouraged participation. Phase 2: We auditioned several hundred fans to select five fans who teamed with their favourite celebrities. Five teams competed in five days of intense challenges. Social media was used to give live updates. Teams could seek help from the millions following their every move online. A key requirement to win: getting traction from the team’s social media postings on Twitter and Facebook. Snippets of the teams were shared daily in social media. Over 90 short videos were created and promoted in 5 days, to give live daily updates and create online excitement. Phase 3: Teams inspired followers to watch 6 episodes of FuelledByFans that aired on TV 1 month later. Multi-screen elements induced viewers to share exclusive content on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, prolonging campaign buzz.

The Results
FuelledByFans generated whopping results. 1) 8 million contest entries. 2) Over 1 million social media engagements from fans. 3) PETRONASBrands Facebook saw an increase of 200,000 fans. 4) Over 2 million views on Youtube. 5) Over 14 million impressions 6) Over 600,000 visits to microsite. 7) And most importantly, sales during the campaign increased by 5% for PETRONAS PRIMAX. PETRONAS had put fans first, and fans had put PETRONAS in their fuel tanks.