Malaysian Media Awards Winners Showcase





2022 | |

SDP: A Roaring Tiger Hunts Down Homebuyers

Advertiser: Sime Darby Property
Brand: SDP
Creative Agency: M&C Saatchi
Credits: Datuk Lai Shu Wei - Sime Darby Property, Chief Marketing & Sales Officer Syamtriyanti Salleh - Sime Darby Property, Head, Media, A&P & Agency Management Dede Pong Wai Ling - Sime Darby Property, General Manager, Branding & Communications Anis Afiqah Ismail - Sime Darby Property, Senior Exec, Media - Township Irnita Ibrahim - Sime Darby Property, Assistant Manager, Campaigns Sai Phaik Cheng - mSix & Partners Malaysia, Head of Agency Neal Pravin Joseph - Mindshare Group, Associate Director, Strategy Dayang Haniza - Mindshare Group, Associate Director Putri Hazirah - Mindshare Group, Associate Director Aeryn Ng - Mindshare Group, Manager

Objective & Challenge
With the economy opening up and the potential of the country opening its borders, there was a sense of heightened optimism in the air as Malaysians prepared to celebrate Chinese New Year (CNY) 2022. During CNY, revenge spending on big ticket items like TVs, white goods and cars were on the rise1. This OPTIMISM was also seen in the property market as 4 in 5 Malaysians intended to buy properties in the next 6 to 24 months2. Sime Darby Property (SDP), welcomed this optimism after a bleak 2 years, as property sales took a nosedive during the peak of Covid-19. To capture this latent intent, CNY presented the perfect opportunity SDP to launch a festive campaign with a sales purpose. The objective was to usher the new year with a ROARSOME promotion that allowed homebuyers to make their dream home a reality. However, SDP was not the only real estate advertiser that saw CNY as the opportunity to win customers. UEM Sunrise, Gamuda and Mah Sing also launched their own festive campaigns to build emotional appeal and push sales. Challenge: The agency’s task was to sell 192 units, new and leftover properties across 8 townships and 20 developments (from high rises, terrace homes, bungalows and semi-Ds). Each development had 2 or 3 of such units left which we needed to sell

Insight & Strategy
SDP’s core target audience (TA) were PMEBs who had the ability to take long-tenure home loans and afford a SDP property averagely priced at RM900k. But beyond this, we knew that when it came to home buying, everyone had a different imagination and reasons for a ‘dream home’. From price points to home location, to township, to size of unit and life stages, the trigger to purchase differed from person to person. Unlike traditional property launches where sales launches were specific to a particular development; the leftover units were extremely hard to sell and undesirable for various reasons. And as the saying goes, “One man’s meat is another man’s poison.” We needed to make each leftover unit desirable, and we needed to develop a campaign that covered different aspirations & motivations to purchase the various properties that SDP had on hand. Strategy: Blending Established Planning Techniques With Innovative Audience Systems to serve hyper-personalised messages to each customer. To develop deep understanding of property buyer beyond macro aspirations, we knew we needed to also understand micro motivations and behaviour, thus we blended 1st , 2nd and 3rd party data through our proprietary platform. 1. Usage of 1st party data: We conducted an online survey of 10,000 home buyers across Malaysia to understand their homebuying aspirations, motivations and purchase intention. 2. Usage of 2nd party data: Then used mobile device matching to link each individual’s results to their browsing behaviour. This allowed us to create a bespoke audience segmentation based on property buying life stages (e.g FirstTimeHomeBuyers, Upgraders and Investors). 3. Usage of 3rd party data: We then overlaid additional insights from 3rd party data providers (e.g YouGov, Eyeota and Mobilewalla) to create richer target group profiles. Using the methodology above, we broke down homebuyers into 7 audiences across 3 strategic groups: 1. First time home buyers (Newly-weds,Living Alone,Govt Servants) 2. Upgraders (Mature Families,Empty Nesters&GovtServants) 3. Investors Drilling deep into data we could see which triggers and touchpoints were relevant to our target groups, which types of properties appealed to them, which features and specifications mattered to them – as well as their general interests. We developed a mapping tool that: – Quantified the groups to ensure they were sizeable – Matched and prioritised SDP types of properties and features for each group – Provided a framework for tailored creative messaging

Execution
For digital communications, our earlier work with our proprietary platform became invaluable. We could serve them creatives specifically tailored to their home-buying motivations and attitudes, following the framework in our mapping tool. What’s more, we could build lookalike audiences at scale, and target those individuals too. 1. Using DCO to speak to different homebuyers: To deploy the creatives, we used the DynamicCreativeOptimisation (DCO) technology, which had been integrated within our proprietary platform. We created a comprehensive system of modular creative elements (images/copy/videos) that covered various township scenes, property types, sale promotions, etc. which was dynamically populated when each ad was served. 2. Geofencing our hunting grounds: At an even deeper level, we also used live data signals like geolocation to drive traffic to showrooms and SDP roadshows. We geofenced customers who were within 2km of a showroom or roadshow, and served them ads as soon as they entered the catchment areas. 3. Using AI to optimise the hunt: In view of that it would take more than one message to trigger a person’s consideration for home purchase, we had to ensure that the next ad messaging that our audience saw, was optimized based on their level of intention to buy a property. To create an intent scoring framework, we looked at multiple signals (e.g number of page visits, dwell time, page views and incomplete lead forms) and weighted it using a machine learning algorithm. Once we gauged their intention, we retargeted page visitors with different creative messaging, to drive quality lead generation. In total over 3,360 personalized creative variations were delivered dynamically as animated banners. This level of campaign personalisation was the first for SDP, enabling us to speak effectively to each individual.

Effectiveness
We exceeded all targets and exceeded industry benchmarks. 1. Overachieved units booked target by 380% (730 vs target of 192) 2. High volume of leads generated: 14K leads vs target 7.5K leads 3. High quality of leads generated: 73% of bookings converted to sales vs industry benchmark 30% 4. Improved conversion rate from leads to unit bookings (5.22% vs previous benchmark 2.53%) 5. Drove 2,438 Footfall to roadshows and sales galleries Spending less for more. 1. Costperlead Cost efficiency by 21% reduction: RM71 CPL vs industry benchmark RM90 CPL (21% reduction) 2. RM1370 CPA vs industry benchmark RM1500 3. Total Clicks of 374K and CTR 0.95%