Malaysian Media Awards Winners Showcase





2022 | |

Sabella: From Zero to Hero

Advertiser: Sabella
Brand: Sabella
Creative Agency: NIL
Credits: Dayang Haniza - Mindshare Group, Associate Director Neal Pravin Joseph - Mindshare Group, Associate Director of Strategy Tuan Mohd Sufian Sulaiman - Sabella Holding Sdn Bhd, CEO Marzuki Maani - M&C Saatchi, Executive Creative Director Marianne Ali - M&C Saatchi, Account Manager En Muhd Adam Iqbal - Sabella Holding Sdn Bhd, Marketing Manager Muhamad Ashraf Bin D M Tej Nasir - Rich Colour Advertising, Sales Director Ahmad Emiel Iman Bin Ahmad Sanusi - Rich Colour Advertising, Sales Executive Puan Siti Fatimah Abdul Samat - Sabella Holding Sdn Bhd, Founder Lee Poh Li - M&C Saatchi, General Manager Ryan Leong - M&C Saatchi, Account Manager Sandra Sin - M&C Saatchi, Art Director Faizal Mukhtar - M&C Saatchi, Copywriter

Objective & Challenge
A husband-and-wife team started the business with 2 sewing machines and a hopeful future in mind. They named the business after their daughter, Sabella. They had a simplistic view of marketing; and relied 100% on drop-shippers(middleman) to sell their clothing’s amongst many other products sold by middleman including competitors fashion goods. 5 years past, demand for its ‘Baju Tanpa Gosok’ (Ironless) clothing range grew. The micro-entrepreneur wanted to transform to an enterprise business. Challenge: While customers recognize the drop shippers they purchase from, the larger target audience do not know who Sabella is. The agency’s task was to take an unknown brand Sabella and market it direct to customers (DTC).

Insight & Strategy
1. Commerce Strategy SME business such as Sabella, do not have the patients for long wait. We had to rethink an alternative business model on how to take Sabella direct to customers in the fastest possible way and deliver visible results. Data showed that 82% of consumers made online transaction through mobile. Realising the growing trend and its promising market, the Agency’s proposal of launching a Sabella shopping app was taken into action immediately. 2. Audience Insights Sabella releases new designs of their ironless range every week at affordable pricing, which address the need of budget conscious working Malay Female, who are below 40 years with PI2,000+. This target audience (TA) love to add/change their wardrobe often. However, amongst the total addressable market of 7.8million, brand recognition for Sabella was zero in 2021. Data showed that passion and attraction to music and reverence for celebrities/pop stars inspired the target. On top of that, they are also frequently tuned into multi-screen sales activation – an activity that has grown popular throughout the pandemic period. The strategy was to find the single biggest music show to trigger positive emotions for Sabella and integrate the offline and online channels to drive immediate sales. 3. Media Strategy Anugerah-Juara-Lagu-2021(AJL) –the number #1 awards show in Malaysia is ‘THE’ platform that brings stars, music, and FASHION all on one show, which made a perfect stage for the launch of Sabella shopping app. The Idea: Daringly hijack the year’s premier entertainment music event for the launch of Sabella shopping app to bring big screen desire down to small screen shopping action. As an SMEs, every RM1 investment in marketing; matters far more than a large organization by at least 20 times, we had to exploit every single media asset on the show. Hence, despite that the investment was made to be just an ordinary sponsor, we needed to go beyond logo placement and promos to compete for visibility, share-of-voice and especially share-of-mind vs. main sponsors. For a brand with no buzz, strategising to win the show cleverly would give us the big brand feel. We negotiated every single AJL media assets within the show that had never been used by any fashion brand, including celebrities’ fashion showcase, conversational pieces on fashion style as well as big stage appearance with call-to-action to encourage app download before and throughout the show.

Execution
Although AJL was premiering on TV, the content was integrated across offline and online platforms to drive seamless conversion journey: 1. Pre-show Hype: – Foyer was dressed like a Sabella-branded fashion window where it served as a backdrop for celebrities’ selfies and interviews, creating visibility for Sabella even before the show started. 2. The Big Launch: – RM1million Sabella contest in conjunction with the launch was announced by FaizalTahir the guest singer on the show who also debuted the brand-new Sabella song wearing specially tailored Sabella jacket. – Celebrity hosts and singer Shiha’s costume transformation during her song mirrored Sabella’s own journey from a simple to glamorous fashion brand moved the audience to find out more about the brand. 3. Strong Call-to-Action throughout the show: – Leveraging on the influencers and slew of celebrities, each featured celebrity had a story about a Sabella fashion piece that they wore, reflecting their personality and encouraged viewers to find out more by downloading the app. – On-screen banner was present throughout the show to encourage viewers to buy Sabella fashion line on its app 4. Post-launch PR: – The transformation story of Sabella performed by celebrity Shiha was featured as a PR story in various entertainment e-magazines

Effectiveness
MORE THAN AN OVERNIGHT SENSATION The newly launched Sabella eCommerce app hit RM1 mil sales in a day. The sales momentum continued for the next 6 months. 1. Business results: – 24,000 Sabella app downloads within an hour to become the No.3 shopping app on the Apple store – Website traffic doubled to 42,000 in just 24 hours. Peaked at 70,000 users per session.- – Sales on 14thMarch (AJL night) reached RM1mil in 1 day (+100% vs daily sales) and sustained momentum for 6 months. 2. Brand results: – Brand Buzz grew +1,060% (0.01pt-10.7pt) during the campaign period – Brand Consideration grew by +600% (0.01pt-6pt) 3. Social media results: – FB traffic increased +199% on 14thMarch(AJL) and sustained for a whole month – Followers increased +13% month-on-month for 3 months – Engagement increased +188% with people showing purchase interest – Behind-the-scene transformation video garnered 1.8m organic views: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy7Sk2k8zy8 Source: Similar Web, YouGov