CLIENT

Maxis Broadband Sdn Bhd 

Challenge

The telecommunications market in Malaysia is highly competitive, with several major players vying for consumer attention through aggressive marketing, especially during major festive seasons. With the advent of Chinese New Year, a time centered around family reunions, Maxis saw an opportunity to reinforce its brand promise of fostering connections.

Yet, as a technology company that projects its futuristic aspirations with primarily transactional and functional messaging over the years, Maxis has lost its human touch to consumers and thus is easily perceived as cold and arrogant.

The brand needed to soften their brand image and build back relevance with the consumers. Hence, Maxis embarked on a direction to humanise connectivity, focusing on how technology can bridge the divide and bring people closer together.

Solution

Chinese New Year is the time of the year when families father together for a reunion to reconnect. But in an increasingly digital world, people are getting less and less connected in REAL life.

The core insight driving our campaign was the observation that after the initial excitement of festive reunions, families tend to slip into surface-level conversations about health, finances, career or relationship. Sometimes, they retreat entirely to their digital devices, missing opportunities for genuine interactions.

We wanted to encourage Malaysians to create meaningful connections with loved ones during Chinese New Year, fostering deeper relationships beyond surface-level interactions. So, we created a campaign with the concept of “Creating Meaningful Connections”. encouraging Malaysians to pledge and reconnect with their loved ones.

To inspire Malaysians, we needed something visually impactful to show what meaningful connections look like.

We created a brand film capturing real-life stories of 4 prominent personalities spontaneously calling their loved ones, expressing their true feelings with raw, unhindered emotions. This approach highlighted the importance of meaningful connections, resonating deeply with the audience and encouraging them to embrace similar interactions in their own lives.

The campaign was amplified further through several media touchpoints:

  • Radio: Sponsorship with popular Chinese radio stations (GoXuan, Melody and MY) to maximise reach and awareness. The brand film was also shared on the radio stations’ social media.
  • TV: Prime time sponsorship across popular programmes and key Chinese audience-dominating channels on Astro network, including AEC, HHD, AOD, Celestial Movies, TVB, KBS World, and Phoenix.
  • Digital: The film was boosted on Meta (Thruplays), YouTube (Trueview), and TikTok (in-feed). Engaged top Chinese digital publications such as ViralCham, RojakLah, and TanTan News to disseminate the brand film and related articles, driving viewership and reach.
  • Engagement: Recorded promos and live liners invited listeners to participate in the “Maxis Heart to Heart” pledge by submitting their pledges and stories on the campaign’s promo page. Announcers shared these stories on air, encouraging listener call-ins to increase engagement.
  • KOL Extension: Featured KOLs shared 10-second and 30-second snippets of their ‘Heart to Heart’ moments on social media, eliciting genuine interaction and encouraging fans to reconnect with their loved ones.

Results

Overall, the campaign accomplished the brand’s primary goals of improving brand uplift, preference and awareness. Furthermore, the campaign also exceeded its media buying targets across all platforms including TV, radio, digital, and social media.

Brand Uplift:

  • ‘Brand that speaks to me’: +5% (Overall), +12% (Chinese demographic), post-ad exposure.
  • ‘Brand that humanises connectivity’: +8% (Overall), +11% (Chinese demographic), post ad exposure.

Brand Preference:

  • Ranking: 1st (42%) as the most preferred CNY ad, with higher preference among Chinese (50%) and T20 (51%) demographics.

Awareness:

  • Visibility: Achieved the highest visibility compared to other Telcos.
    • Unaided Recall: 65%
    • Aided Recall: 42%
  • Radio Awareness: High aided awareness (83%) among station-specific listeners.
  • Digital Engagement: Generated 6.2 million views and 18.9 million impressions across all mediums.
    • YouTube: Accounted for 36% of the total seen rate, exceeding targets for views and impressions by +32.4%.

Amplification:

  • KOL Promotion: Single KOL attained 190,864 views and 14,711 engagements on their social media platforms.
  • Cross-Posting: RevMedia facilitated cross-posting, reaching audiences beyond social media, achieving 41,419 views via YouTube ads (+15.1% above targets).