Maxis Merdeka

Client

Maxis is Malaysia’s leading telecommunications service provider. The brand is driven by its purpose of mainstreaming what’s next – and thus enabling individuals, families and businesses to do more in an always-on world.

Key Disciplines

  • Campaign strategy
  • Content creation: social, website and other campaign collaterals

Results

  • Most popular Malaysian YouTube ad in Q3 2014, with 1.1M+ views
  • Listed among the Top 5 Most Memorable National Day Ads of All Time by The Star Newspaper
  • Campaign of the Year – Dragons of Malaysia
  • Best social Media or World-of-Mouth Campaign – Mumbrella Asia

Challenge

Malaysia’s National Day celebration is considered the Super Bowl of advertising for local brands. Each year, it’s a challenged to be noticed amid the noise as brands compete to have the most memorable ads with the most uplifting and inspiring National Day message.

In 2014, such a message was more sorely needed than ever. The past one year had left the nation reeling from two aviation disasters that rocked its national carrier, economic woes, political polarisation and natural disasters that displaced thousands.

As Malaysia’s leading telco, Maxis wanted to connect with Malaysians by sharing a positive National Day message that would unify them behind the hope for better days ahead.

Solution

The GrowthOps KL strategy team focused on a truth that is so ingrained in all Malaysians across all cultures that everyone took it for granted. It’s the fact that we use more than 30 family honorifics in all major local languages to address each other – from ‘elder brother’ to ‘auntie’; ‘brother-in-law’ to ‘grandmother’ – whether we’re actually related or not.

This insight drove our National Day campaign idea for Maxis: that our Malaysian family is larger than we think. And with this profoundly beautiful realisation comes the comforting reassurance that no matter what challenge lies ahead of us, we have over 30 million family members to help us overcome it. Certainly a welcome boost to the spirits of Malaysians celebrating the nation’s birthday.

Outcome

The campaign video became the most viewed, most shared and most liked National Day video on YouTube in 2014.

Beyond views and likes, the campaign message really struck a chord with Malaysians from all walks of life. In one example, a local social influencer to his own initiative to save and re-upload the video on Facebook with Malay subtitles to extend its reach to more people in the community. This unofficial version alone was shared more times on Facebook than all the versions on official Maxis channels combined.

The video reached beyond national borders to reach Malaysians and their friends around the world – garnering over a million views across 135 countries, and boosting Maxis’ brand preference scores. In a surreal development, the Malaysian Ambassador in Prague called Maxis to ask permission to screen the video as an introduction to Malaysian culture for Czech citizens. In Japan, Malaysian students wrote to Maxis asking the same thing for their class project.