2014 | Finalist | Best Use of a Small Budget (Under RM100,000) Excludes Digital
Advertiser: Cerebos (M) Sdn Bhd Brand: Brand's Bird's Nest Creative Agency: 180 Degrees Brandcom Sdn Bhd Credits: Universal McCann — Chew Kagee (Senior Vice President), Chai Yen Yen (Business Director), Mabel Lau (Associate Director), Velda Kon (Associate Director), Chai Wei Ruan (Media Planner), Joey Tan (Senior Planner), Chow Lee Kheng (Senior Media Buyer);Cerebos (M) Sdn Bhd — Koh Joo Siang (General Manager), Carmen Liew (Marketing Manager), Kuang Ming Ming (Senior Product Manager),Kathryn Kam (Assistant Product Manager),Melissa Tan (Senior Product Manager)
The Challenge
Brand’s Bird’s Nest, a beauty drink,was popular with older Chinese women but not with younger ones – resulting in loss of market share. We needed to connect with 2 extremes – the younger and older Chinese women. Budget was limited, so we had only one opportunity to make it right
The Solution – Insight & Idea
Insight: In a typical Chinese family, moms and daughters rarely said ‘I Love You’ to each other. Instead, they would show love in many other ways such as cooking favourite dishes, giving birthday gifts, spending time together and that was all. It was ironic as saying ‘I Love You’ was the simplest yet most powerful gesture of love. However, it was the least used expression of love. Strategy: BRAND’s Bird’s Nest decided to break this barrier and bridge the gap between moms and their daughters. Bird’s Nest became the catalyst for daughters to express their love for their mothers. Idea: As we had a limited budget, we had to reach them at the right context, with the right content and the right medium. There was no room for wastage. The Media Agency masterminded a national movement of Chinese daughters saying ‘I Love you’ to their mothers strategically weaving the right medium-Radio, the right context-Mothers Day and placement in the right timing and content to bring this to life. We empowered chinese daughters to express their love to their mothers, very likely for the first time ever and in public and exchange the most symbolic gift of this love, Bird’s Nest.
The Execution
We crafted a strategic partnership with 988FM the highly targeted channel for our TA. We first set the stage by driving awareness of Brand’s Bird’s Nest as an ideal Mother’s Day gift targeting specific day parts leading up to the Mother’s day. This was further reinforced when we engaged listeners with a live Mother’s Day dedication, where call-ins would be meaningful and touching as Radio DJs would call up the participant’s mom on the spot so that the participant could publicly express her love to her mom LIVE on radio. It was a very touching moment. One of the participants told her mom, “I want to thank my mom for taking care of me for 24 years. She has always been there for me, supporting and encouraging me. Mom I love you. Happy Mother’s Day”. Her mother, so touched by the public display of love, said, “I feel like crying, I’m so touched…“ At the end, to complete this expression of love for moms, each participant’s mother was awarded with a Brand’s ‘Bird’s Nest’ hamper.
The Results
The odds were against us as we tried to change something that had existed for years amongst the Chinese community. But it worked! We had a whopping 5.9x Sales ROI with 300% increase of sales vs last year, which was incredible. More importantly, we encouraged 1.35 million Chinese women across the country to express their love to their moms. And for most of them, it would have been a first.