The past few years has been challenging for Malaysia. The public sentiment were low and celebrating Chinese New Year was far from our minds. In fact, the Malaysian ‘consumer sentiment index’ was down by 20% at the beginning of 2016 and ‘business conditions index’ plummeted by 30%.

With it being the first festive of the year, something had to be done to lift the spirits of Malaysians.

To do so, we turned to one of the most synonymous word with Chinese New Year – Prosperous. While many would associate it with money and success, we gave it a different meaning. We define ‘Prosperous’ as appreciating the most prized possession – our loved ones.

The ‘Rubber Boy’ campaign reminded Malaysians to always appreciate their loved ones through its heart-warming story revolving around a mother and her son. This story was channelled to Malaysians on various platforms – broadcast, print, digital andsocial.

What does it really mean to have a blessed year ahead? A young boy finds out his #greatestblessing the hard way when he walks a mile in his mother's shoes.

Implementation

To create conversation and buzz around Rubber Boy, we launched the campaign with a press conference and simultaneously seeded the webfilm on PETRONAS’ brand channel and social media platforms. A shorter edit was released as a TVC and on cinema that invited Malaysians to watch the entire film on PETRONAS’ brand channel and share their own personal stories. A social command centre was created at the time of the launch that turned people’s stories in to light-hearted comic strips – thus generating sharable content for consumers’ personal networks. In line with our key message of “Being grateful for what you have”, we created ‘mini ang-pows’ (envelopes containing money used as gift for children) for a charity drive initiative with PETRONAS. Using the mini ang-pows, PETRONAS’ staff were invited to donate their small change towards a selected charity.

Timeline

3 - 18 February 2016

Placement

Broadcast, radio, on-ground, social, digital