Malaysian Media Awards Winners Showcase





2018 | |

Transforming Angry Faces to Happy Likes on Social

Advertiser: Celcom Axiata Berhad
Brand: Celcom
Creative Agency: -
Credits: -

The Challenges
All eyes are on Malaysia hosting the 29th SEA Games 2017. Through a series of unfortunate organizing errors, the Malaysian social newsfeed were flooded with “angry faces”, leaving a bad impression and causing low morale and embarrassment nationwide. Celcom, as a national brand want Malaysians to stand as one and rise together for SEA Games during this “down period”.

Insight, Strategy and the Idea
During SEA Games, all brands jump on the bandwagon by trend jacking congratulatory posts. Instead, we took the reverse route and “HATE-JACK” (hijack hate sentiments) turning around negative sentiments in keywords such as #shameonyoumalaysia, #cheating and the like. We looked for negative word clouds through social listening and ‘put off the fire’ as and where they were starting. To stand out further, we have teams on ground to capture the real time action at the arena. Badminton, a sport that has proven to drive unity, cutting across gender, age and race was made the focal point to turn angry social faces into a positive likes.

Media Execution
We eyeballed key badminton matches and published social posts pre, during and after match, boosted on a daily basis targeted to those spreading “hate” on social media. We crawled YouTube for placement on negative news coverage; diverting their frustration into supporting spirit and camaraderie. We were also amongst the first to apply Facebook Frame, calling all Malaysians to frame their profile photos as a signal of support to the local sportsmen and games.

Results and Effectiveness
Celcom successfully reduced the negative sentiment SOV by a whopping 80% during the badminton period!
1. Average 10% post engagement, 5X the industry benchmark
2. Started with 2% engagement rate which peaked at 30% for the finale post
3. 40,000 like & retweet on Twitter
4. 680,000 negative SEA Games viewers watched our clip in full
5. Celcom led the category with 40% SOV