Challenge 

Over 50 Festive brand films are produced by brands and content creators in Malaysia each year. These branded films have since evolved into multidimensional storytelling with intriguing narratives that resonate deeply with audiences. This tradition allows brands to enhance their brand awareness during festive occasions such as Merdeka, Chinese New Year, Hari Raya, and Deepavali.  

For Astro, festive periods contribute a significant amount of total media sales every year. Due to the pandemic, there was a significant sales decline, as brands perceive TV advertising for short-term festive campaigns as cost-inefficient. Consequently, many brands shifted their focus towards digital platforms. However, with the digital landscape becoming increasingly saturated, it was difficult for brands to stand out.   

We aimed to achieve two primary objectives:  

  • To increase Astro’s festive ad sales  
  • Generate greater demand for its platforms by offering improved festive advertising solutions to help brands increase penetration and reach.  

Our success relied on maximising our transmedia network to enhance advertisers’ visibility and exposure across multiple platforms within the ecosystem. Our approach was simple yet impactful: Create a highly accessible and integrated platform for Malaysians to watch our multicultural stories through a branded film marathon.  

This allows brands to optimise their marketing budgets by reaching a broader audience beyond the digital realm, connecting with quality, premium viewers across Astro’s 5.5 million households. This initiative provided an addictive cinematic content on television which resonates with viewers and uplifts the festive mood.  

Solution

To engage audiences and promote the campaign, we implemented four distinct phases: Pre-Promo, Amplification, Engagement, and Sustenance. 

Phase 1 – Pre-Promo: 

To generate interest and spark conversations, we shared and amplified past films, while teasing upcoming films through revisiting memorable and evergreen brand films. This was done through 30 versions of pre-promos across five high-rated vernacular channels, as well as amplified on popular social platforms of radio and digital sites. 

Phase 2 – Amplification: 

We launched a special series on Channel 100 – ‘Shorties Celebration Series’, where our hosts presented the latest brand films across ten episodes, each lasting ten minutes, with fresh runs and repeats during the festive period.  

We leveraged popular entertainment talk shows on Astro Ria, such as MeleTOP and HLive, to remind audiences to watch the brand films. Additionally, we incorporated sponsor segments, lower third banners, branded advertorials, and social media postings on Facebook and Instagram, for higher recall.  

Popular news segments on Astro Awani, Astro AEC, and Astro Vaanavil provided brand integration opportunities, including thematic discussions, interviews with brands and creators, and vox pop. A dedicated news segment was aired for one week to announce the initiative.  

Phase 3 – Engagement: 

To sustain visibility and enhance impact, the brand films were transformed into prelude shows leading up to the main festive programming across multiple channels. Full-length brand films were aired across 224 spots in 16 channels for two weeks, featuring one brand per channel daily. Additionally, 30-second cut downs aired across 1,260 spots in 17 channels over 28 days. 

Phase 4 – Sustenance: 

To maintain campaign reach and sustenance, we extended brands’ festive messages into an audio brand film format. One-minute audio formats of the brand films were distributed across Astro radio stations, maximising exposure to a vast audience of 17.9 million weekly listeners.  

Results 

Our campaign achieved unprecedented success during the Merdeka, Chinese New Year and Hari Raya festive seasons.  

Brand Impact:  

Merdeka 

  • We attracted 4 major brands to take up our solutions – Maxis, Celcom, Telekom Malaysia and U Mobile.  
  • Maxis achieved the highest TVC reach at 8.7 million, with the brand film reaching 5.7 million plus On Demand (OD) viewing reaching an additional 11,378 households.  
  • On radio, Maxis’s 1 minute audio film reached 8.1 million listeners and extended brand exposure to 1.9 million audiences on digital.  

Chinese New Year (CNY)  

  • We saw an uptake in sign ups for the package to 6 brands – IJM Land, PayNet, Hong Leong, U Mobile, Bio Essence and Sun Strong Entertainment.  
  • Overall, Hong Leong garnered the highest brand film reach at 1.2 million audiences and extended OD viewing reaching 1,322 households in just 2 weeks.  

 Hari Raya 

  • We attracted 4 major brands – Grab, Celcom, Maxis and IJM Land- 3 of which actually continued their spending with us due to the success of their previous participation for Merdeka and CNY.  
  • Celcom recorded the highest peak at 7.6 million TVC reach, while Grab achieved the highest OD viewing reaching 40,484 households.  

This achievement is a testament to the power of our innovative solutions in getting brands the recognition, wide reach and exposure the brand films truly deserved within Astro’s transmedia ecosystem.  

Sales impact for Astro 

This initiative proved how our creative solution was able to breathe new life into a brand’s festive campaigns, amplifying these branded long form content on mainstream media via TV and Radio to engage more Malaysians during major festive periods.  

Overall, our campaign successfully delivered impressive reach and engagement, attracting major brands and achieving significant growth in sales during the festive periods. This success allowed us to make this initiative a permanent fixture for future festive campaigns in the coming years.