Malaysian Media Awards Winners Showcase





2022 | |

A Coke Can into a Nationwide AR Campaign. Turbocharging Brand’s E-Com Campaign Regionally. Geo-Fencing Malaysian to Vaccination. What’s next for him?

Advertiser: -
Brand: -
Creative Agency: -
Credits: Saravanan Asogan - Business Director, MediaCompete Sdn Bhd Wan Lih Chan - General Manager, Mediacompete Sdn. Bhd., Rana Himanshu - General Manager, Mediacompete Sdn. Bhd., Jaz Lee - Creative Director, Ogilvy and Mather Shawn Siew - Senior Communication Manager, Mediacompete Sdn. Bhd. Nurul Hidayah - Communication Manager, Mediacompete Sdn. Bhd.

Background
While everyone loves an underdog story, not many realize the amount of blood, sweat and tears that are shed in this ruthless and unforgiving industry where for every three things that get resolved, other five arises. Success doesn’t come overnight. Success here in advertising lies in the tedious grind day-in and day-out for weeks and sometimes months before one sees the light at the end of the tunnel. It requires a lot of hard work, but above everything it demands grit and humility. And it brings me great pleasure to be writing this entry for Saravanan Asogan, an individual who embodies these characteristics.

What’s Special about You & Key Achievements
Out to make to make a mark and a legacy in the industry, Saravanan has and continues to push himself beyond media and the status quo to deliver fresh and outside-of-the-box solutions: 1. How He Turned a Coke Can into a Nationwide CNY Greetings? During a period where people couldn’t travel back home for CNY, Saravanan led the team to the launch Coke’s first AR campaign in Malaysia. Malaysians were able to send personalised AR Greetings to their loved ones by scanning an actual Coke can. It changed the way how campaigns were traditionally executed beyond the conventional touchpoints and resulted in positive growth in brand attributes, ‘Brand I Love’ by 8+ points in Malaysia and +1 in Singapore. 2. Wooing Malaysian Mums with the Launch of Anmum Essential Gold The driving force behind the launch of the Essential Gold product variant in Malaysia. Saravanan lead the team to a digital takeover strategy through Google Max activation on display and video, followed with a 360-content strategy as well as expanding the brand’s e-commerce capabilities to include both on and off platform commerce inventories. Within 8 months, the brand snatched 1.6% market share and the e-com business grew in size by more than 2x making Malaysia a top 5 market. 3. Geofencing Malaysian to an Uplift in Vaccination During the Pandemic Instead of opting for a conventional digital campaign in support of Redoxon’s partnership with MOH, he lead the team to design a hyperlocalised mobile campaign to ensure maximum localisation. All yellow and red zones were geofenced with customized messaging in which all banners were made to dynamically change daily based on the status of a particular region, delivering a more precise communication! Vaccination registration increased by 10 mil while vaccination rate increased 50% during this period of time! Redoxon’s new product searches drove +153% search increased and +40% traffic vs. P6M.

Leadership Skills
Through his tenure with us, he has been nothing short of dynamic and was able to deliver consistent and great results and below are key highlights where his leadershipship skills shine the brightest: 1. Thoughtleadership : Turbocharging Fonterra E-Com Full-Suite Activation Across Malaysia and Vietnam Saravanan understood the importance of an e-commerce first approach during the pandemic and led the implementation of a full suite of on-platform and off-platform inventories across Google, Facebook, Shopee and Lazada. He subsequently also designed a 4-quadrant framework which enables micro-optimization on an SKU level instead. The results: Fonterra E-Com in Malaysia and Vietnam are now consistently within the top 5 performing market in Southeast Asia. 2. Finesse in Account Leadership / Management : Leading TCCC and Fonterra to One of The Best Client Rating Point in 5 Years Within 18 months, Saravanan provided stability and innovation in the highly competitive FMCG category through his tenacity and grit, achieving one of the best client ratings since: “Throughout the span of this turbulent year (pandemic), Sara has been a giant rock as our media partner, being consistenly agile and dynamic to address multiple business challenges the brand faced.” – Marketing Director Fonterra “As a team leader I saw how he helped enable and grow his team through patient guidance while from a business standpoint, he helped pushed us into innovative digital media executions that led to several indusry awards!” – Global Social Engagement Director, The Coca-Cola Company 3. Ability to Lead, Nurture and Grow : Driving Force Being the Agency’s Super Pitch Team Being the jack of all trades, Saravanan is also a part of the leadership team of the Agency Super Ptich Team which in the past 6 months as achieved: 25 clients engaged; 16 clients pitched; 6 new clients won! These includes e-hailing giants across Asia, one of the biggest airline companies in Asia, Malaysia’s top food aggregator app, world’s top 15 bank, and a few key govermental clients. In totality he brought in over RM35mil worth of billing in FY21 / FY22! The success Saravanan enjoys today was not achieved overnight, it was endless cycles of constant learning. From analysing data, building partnerships, understanding a business’s needs to knowing what it takes to lead and nurture a team, every lesson has led him to where he is today.