KUALA LUMPUR, October 13, 2011
Draftfcb is again among the winners at the Malaysia Effies Awards, making it the third successive year the agency has taken home metal from the country’s top awards for advertising effectiveness.
At last night’s awards ceremony, Draftfcb won a Bronze Effie for its success in launching and driving the growth of Malaysia’s now famous SMS-based mobile social network called Kolony.
To launch Kolony, the agency’s campaign was initiated with videos of a “mysterious symbol” carefully seeded on the Internet to pique public interest. The short videos attracted influential bloggers to talk about the new symbol and the bloggers’ comments started an “outbreak” of chatter and buzz across Malaysia. As more information was intentionally leaked, the curiosity factor grew as the symbol, portrayed as being “infectious”, continued to appear in public places as well as in traditional and online media.
One of the few videos found on YouTube.
The campaign eventually revealed the Kolony symbol and the number of people “infected” using the Kolony SMS service reached its target of 1.5 million people within 21 days and went on to achieve three million users.
Draftfcb Malaysia’s Bronze Award at the 2011 Effies follows successes in previous years’ competitions. In 2009 the agency was awarded Gold for client CIMB Bank and in 2010 the agency won Bronze for Celcom, which is the parent company of the Kolony brand.