How Astro took a social taboo subject and made it talkable

CTOS teams up with Astro to make the inconvenient truth more honest!

OVERVIEW

CTOS provides credit reporting and is widely used by financial institutions to determine an applicant’s creditworthiness.

CTOS wanted to educate consumers on the benefits of understanding their own credit standing and empower them to manage their own creditworthiness and be rewarded with faster access to credit at lower borrowing cost.
Campaign objective: Create an awareness amongst Malaysians on the importance of knowing their CTOS Score.

KEY CHALLENGE

Despite being aware of the existence of CTOS, it was observed that Malaysians did not take any action to check their credit report and score. Often, they had the perception that there was no need to fork out money for such services.

The other challenge was the misconception that once Malaysians checked their CTOS score, it would reveal their financial track record to third parties.

But credit education is too serious, boring and daunting, therefore CTOS needed to find a fun and engaging way to deliver the message to the masses.

CONSUMER INSIGHT

The CTOS score only becomes a concern when an issue arises in their credit score that hinders them from obtaining a loan for something such as a new vehicle or a home.

And once they discover their credit check is low, it is too late and takes quite some time to rebuild it.

OBJECTIVE

The main objective at hand was to change the mindset of consumers. CTOS wanted consumers to reset their priority by placing the CTOS score first, above everything else when it same to planning a big item purchase. The task at hand required CTOS to reach out to all working adults who made big purchase decisions.

THE STRATEGIC FIT

The main challenge was to ensure the mass public realised the importance of good credit health and the benefits of CTOS.

Astro was the perfect fit to cater to these needs of CTOS given Astro’s multiple platforms across all languages.

Astro also possessed a high reach towards millennials thus giving CTOS the perfect opportunity to reach out to young, working adults.

Astro’s competitive advantage was their various multiple channels catered to all races and masses of working adults in Malaysia. Astro’s strategy was to spread the awareness of the CTOS score through all their Malay, Chinese, English and Indian television channels.

Astro’s marketing arm, Blaze Digital worked with integrated digital-first solutions through Astro Awani, Gempak, Daily Rojak, Astro Xuan and radio channels like Myfm, Hitzfm and Erafm.

CONTENT STRATEGY

CTOS Social Experiment Video
A social experiment video was done featuring a few couples, at different stages of their lives. Each couple had to be transparent about their credit score for the first time in their lives to their partner.

Meet The Parents Video
Another video was done to engage the audience about the importance of CTOS – through a comical ad using television as a channel. The video depicted a young guy attempting to impress his girlfriend’s parents. However, all the parents wanted to know was his CTOS score…

COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY

Astro used its multiple media platforms across languages to ensure high reach and awareness for all messaging.
Real life couples were used for the CTOS social media experiment for authenticity. The entertainment show, Motif Viral was used to target the millennials.

RESULTS

When the campaign first kicked off in October, there was a surge in the CTOS web traffic by 83%. The spike corresponded with 59.2% airtime slot allocation for October as compared to 36.9% in November and 3.9% in December.
Consumer sign-ups to enquire about their CTOS scores reached an all high of 48% and sales upped by 21%.
All the interviews and advertisements done on TV reached a total of 11.9 million views!