Leo Burnett Kuala Lumpur
Maxis
Maxis
2020 has been a bad year for device sales – a key revenue stream – for Malaysian telco Maxis. iPhone 11 sales dipped by 31% month-on-month in January. And by the time Malaysia went into its COVID-19 lockdown, device sales saw a whopping 66% drop in the first month alone!With the lockdown extended further, we needed to win big with the upcoming iPhone 12 launch. And for flagships like iPhone 12, the telco who is first to market with a pre-order campaign, wins the most pre-orders. Problem is, all telcos had to wait for the Apple Keynote announcement before using the phone’s likeness. Maxis was looking for a way to beat the other telcos, without breaking Apple’s rules. How do we do a pre-order campaign before other telcos, if we’re not allowed to show the phone? By not showing the phone at all.
We used social listening to understand the most speculated features in Malaysia: colours, sizes, distance sensor, low light mode, real-time video editing. We then created a pre-order parody film around these features inviting people to pre-order the much-hyped 12, using an “invisible” phone: the first time Maxis launched a phone ad without showing the phone. We wrote, shot, edited and launched our film with this invisible “AirPhone 12” in a matter of days, completely in-house, even using our office as the location. We knew that we would only be able to air the film in mere days (if we were lucky) before the other telcos cried foul and pressured us to take it down. Fortunately, the film became the talk of the town in a matter of hours, gaining press not just in Malaysia, but as far as the US. Due to the buzz generated, we had to take it down within a day.But by then, the film had already delivered. Within hours, we saw 48.4x more shares than our average FB asset. Leading t
Executive Creative Director: Emir Shafri
Senior Creative Director: Walter Teoh
Creative Group Head: Sze Mei Chan, Eelyn Ng
Copywriter: Ruzen Chung
Art Director: Sze Mei Chan, Walter Teoh
Account Lead, OPTM: Munas Van Boonstra
Account Management: Jennifer Liew, Charmayne Anthony
Social Media Manager: Rachel Zoe Biggs
Production House: Prodigious Malaysia (Part of Publicis Groupe)
Film Director: Kubhaer Jethwani
Executive Producers: Munas Van Boonstra, Jennifer Hendroff
Producer: Farah Ghazali
Line Producer: Shan Iman
DOP: Aidil bin Razali
Editor: Kathy Choo
Media Agency: Publicis Media Malaysia
Managing Director: Pi Yee Wong
Associate Planning Director: Heidi Lim
Senior Digital Manager: Sam Chew
