Telekom Malaysia: How Telekom Malaysia gamified a TV ad to help those in need

Credits & Description:

BRAND: Telekom Malaysia
CATEGORY: Telecoms/Mobile
REGION: Malaysia
DATE: July - July 2015
AGENCY: UM
MEDIA CHANNEL: Online
Hari Raya (the Muslim festival celebrating the end of the fasting month) is one of Malaysia’s largest festive periods. And this period is extremely advertising cluttered. Every big corporate brand from Petronas to BERNAS (regulator of the rice industry) would release a corporate film on social media to build positive brand imagery. These festive films have become so popular, that the public eagerly awaits them.
This year, Telekom Malaysia (TM) issued UM a massive challenge: One million views. Just to put that in context, last year’s TM raya film had about 300,000 views.
How to not drown in the clutter of feel–good videos? More importantly, how to achieve one million views?
Strategy
The agency felt that given how consumers media habits were changing, it shouldn't just tell stories. It should be ‘doing’ stories. So story-doing became the catch phrase as the agency went about planning this campaign.
The fasting month encourages Muslims to be generous in donating and perform good acts. So much so that TM itself donates to charity during this period. This concept of donating and good acts is the main storyline of the TM Raya film – a Pakcik (term of respect for an older gentleman in Malay) giving all his paltry earnings of the day to help a young woman out. Moreover, Malaysians are a generous lot, ranking in as 7th most generous nation of the world. We wanted to tap into this spirit of generosity.
The idea: An Interactive video, where every interaction leads to a donation by TM to a charity of their choice. Instead of just passive watching, it encouraged active giving by tapping into TM’s CSR efforts.
With a promise to donate on behalf of all participating Malaysian citizens, TM’s campaign marks the first instance of a brand in Malaysia using video as a platform for gathering donations.
Execution
The basic idea is that the more you interact, the more TM would donate. The agency took the existing ad film and gamified the entire viewing experience for the digital world. As people watch the film it would pause at certain critical moments and gave them simple click tasks. At the end, a counter will display the total number of clicks. The clicks will then be converted to Malaysian Ringgit to be donated to multiple charities. Simple.
For example, in the dark alley scene, one of the tasks was to click the light bulb to light it up. Another task was, in the scene where the heroine tries to find the Pakcik, the video would pause and viewers had to find and click him in order to continue.
To spread the video, UM explored various angles to drive website traffic through a combination of organic & paid content, dark network social channels and influences (bloggers and celebrities).
The agency also went on-ground to spread the message of Pakcik. Working together with ‘Suspended Meals Malaysia’, TM sponsored meals for the needy at high traffic areas, seeding #PakcikMisteri (Mysterious Pakcik) as the kind stranger who did it. UM created short form video content showcasing these acts and encouraged people to watch the donation video so they could actively give too.
Results
In total, TM managed to secure 1.26M views on YouTube, 95,000 views on the first day of posting.
In terms of engagement:
• There were a total of 9.3 million clicks on the video resulting in TM donating RM300,000 ($74m)
• The video was also extremely engaging with a very high completion rate of 97%
• 6.6M organic impressions with 1.2K mentions of TM’s raya campaigns on social media within two weeks of the campaign period.
• On Ground Activation Social Seeding Result:
- 8 on-ground posts
- 79,120 reach (avg. 13k/post)
- 368 engagement (avg. 61/post)
• Dark Networks & Influencers:
- 23 Influencers engaged
- 4.8 million Reach (Influencer audience)
- 21,207 Engagement
In conclusion, the agency not only managed to achieve a difficult KPI, but spread a message of positivity and helped make a true difference in the lives of those in need.