Malaysian Media Awards Winners Showcase

The Challenge
Every smoker knows ‘Smoking is Injurious to Health’ yet they find it hard to kick the butt. Nicorette, a smoking cessation product was low on consumer awareness and needed to be seen by the consumers despite heavy smoke screen that hung infront of their eyes. Our challenge was to drive awareness and product adoption.

Insight, Strategy and the Idea
A smoker needs any excuse to light a cigarette and Muslim Malay men, the largest homogenous smoker group in Malaysia were no different. However, during the holy month of Ramadan as they fasted from dawn to dusk they also refrained from smoking. But once the call to break the fast was heard, after a sip of water and a few dates the first thing they did was to light up a cigarette and ease the daylong craving. With cigarette consumption reducing during the day in the Holy Month, our task was to encourage Malay men to continue resisting the urge and be smoke free Dusk to Dawn. Agency recommended engaging the consumers in brand bear hug and encouraging them to give up vice via a 360 communication cover. We leveraged Newspaper, Radio and Digital platform using daypart targeting and time sensitive messaging to urge Malay men to quit smoking. Our campaign relied on smart scheduling strategy on Radio and Digital with contextual message placement in newspapers to drive brand awareness and product adoption.

Media Execution
We launched three pronged campaign aimed at capturing consumer intent from the first Day of Ramadan. Ramadan month witnesses Muslims across Malaysia leave office by 4pm against usual 5.30-6.00pm. 70% Malaysians leaving offices together led to inevitable traffic-jams. Stuck in jams, chances were that most drivers were listening to Malay radio stations, therefore we partnered #1 Malay Channel EraFM. We leveraged DJ talksets during peak hour 4-5pm, encouraging smokers to resist the urge and use Nicorette to curb cravings, we engaged them again around 7pm just before Muslims broke their fast; Persuaded them further with repeat messaging between 8-10pm when they were on their way to the mosque. We planned our press ads to beat the first day Ramadan clutter and launched our ads strategically in the second week in the section which carried Ramadan news, highlighting Nicorette’s Nicotine Replacement Therapy and benefits. We further leveraged mobile, a constant companion for lonely smokers to deliver our message with high frequency programmatically. We timed our message delivery before breaking fast time when they were on the mobile. Research showed a spike in mobile consumption before morning Sahur and we leveraged popular newssites to catch them early and continued engaging them throughout the day, urging them to use Nicorette to curb the craving. Delivered with consistent frequency across touchpoints our simple messageof resisting the urge and using Nicorette to curb the cravings yielded strong results and more important helped Malaysians take a step towards becoming smoke free.

Results and Effectiveness
The multi-media campaign reached 76% of our TG with a dramatic 25% increase in Nicorette’s search volume and helped register a 107% increase in sales value with 24% SOM QoQ.