Challenge

Febreze is a well-known Malaysian household name and is known as the ‘odour neutraliser’, eliminating foul odours on soft surfaces like sofas, carpets, and fabrics, leaving behind a fresh fragrance. This unique selling point worked well for the brand until the pandemic revealed a crucial insight.

Unaware that by cleaning only hard surfaces and ignoring soft surfaces like curtains, sofas, carpets and heavy fabrics, puts people at risk for harbouring germs and viruses in the home. Our biggest challenge was changing people’s cleaning habits to include soft surfaces as part of their cleaning routine by using Febreze as an effective degerming tool for fabrics.

We reconnected with Febreze’s TA, Malay Females 25+ to reintroduce the right notion of cleaning soft surfaces using Febreze. We strategised to leverage on familiar, relatable content, which audiences can easily understand and accept. Our objective: (1) Maximise Febreze’s brand awareness by increasing reach and engagement (2) Improve Febreze’s sales performance.

Solution

Our plan was to adopt an unconventional maximisation strategy beyond traditional drama sponsorship to reach a wider audience. Ramadan was the best period to launch the campaign, where infection rates were high, making Febreze more relevant than ever.

Our data showed Malaysians’ appetite for local content grew significantly. We leveraged a highly anticipated drama, ‘Rindu Awak Separuh Nyawa’, based on the best selling book by Malaysia’s no.1 novelist, Siti Rosmizah.

  • We read 280,000 words of script with over 1,000 scenes to identify and rewrote the female lead as a germaphobe to represent Febreze.
  • Using the characters, we created 3 contextualised capsules based on 3 perspectives: Newly Weds, Husband & Raya Festivities, demonstrating usage and brand efficacy.
  • Capsules aired across Astro’s channels, digital and social media to increase awareness.

This amplification strategy expanded reach beyond the drama slot, but we needed to engage people in a fun way. Big idea: Create Febreze’s first Content Narrative Gaming platform to gamify assets created, turning it into a digital treasure hunt contest.

  • We created Gempak Chopp, an interactive site and gamified the capsules by inserting 21 Febreze hotspots, allowing audiences to stop, rewind and forward for hidden clues to answer quizzes and win weekly cash prizes totalling RM10,000.

Results

Our breakthrough maximisation strategy amplified the campaign reach amongst Febreze’s TA (Malay Females, 25+).

Sales

  • Achieved the highest quarter performance since 2018, with a +118% Sales versus the average of previous year.

TV

  • Over 1.7 million audiences were exposed to Febreze’s integrated scenes in the 48-episode drama ‘Rindu Awak Separuh Nyawa’.
  • Entire campaign exposure (commercial airtime/branded promo) reached 2.6 million (88%) of Malay Females 25+ (Febreze’s TA). That’s 9 out of 10 people within the TA who saw the Febreze ad at least once.

Digital

  • Traffic to the Gempak Chopp site recorded 17,428 active participants on the platform, surpassing KPIs by 162%.
  • Site traffic surged on Gempak Chopp, surpassing benchmarks by 161%.
  • Audiences played the game over and over again. With an average time spent at 4.08 minutes, that’s 50% higher than similar web in Malaysia.
  • Audiences were willing to spend an average of 10 minutes to answer the brand survey.

Brand survey results

  • 65% of participants answered all the questions correctly on the platform, signalling a good understanding of the brand message with high recall.
  • 99% of participants surveyed expressed purchase intention for Febreze, post campaign.