IDEAS: The Yellow Coverage Fellow Story (Part 2)

Edward Ong is on a quest to discover and create Malaysia’s best ideas. He is an award-winning Writer and Creative Director and can be found at IdeasAreBorderless.com

Hold up! Click here for Part 1 of this story!

Two weeks ago, we talked about how Alvin Teoh, then CD at NagaDDB, came up with the idea of a Yellow Coverage Fellow to talk about DiGi’s coverage story.

DiGi is a telco competing against larger and more established competitors. For most creatives, the story ends there and everybody goes back to have their Teh Tarik.

However, we often forget that the client (ie the marketing head) has to sell the work internally (to the CEO and in some cases, the board of directors), and then- especially if it’s a new brand direction- to the rest of the staff.

Most marketing departments spend their waking hours arranging for meetings, and trying to stay awake during meetings.

After presenting the creative work, comments are consolidated, streamlined and emailed to the agency: “Great news! CEO loves the work with some very minor changes:

Replace the visual, headline, and body copy and we’re good to go!”

This story is about how NagaDDB sold the Yellow Coverage Fellow, and got the subsequent buy-in from internal audiences.

Objective
“So, you had like 3 or 4 creative options for the client?” I asked Alvin. “No, only one. This was it,” he said. “Do or die.”

“And did the Chinese dude- the interim marketing head- like it?” “Yes. He basically said, ‘This is beyond what we expected. It’s too big for me to approve- I need to show it to our CEO’. Morten (DiGi’s then CEO) was in a meeting at the time and we had to wait for a few hours.

Morten came in, sat down, said four words: ‘I’m here. Impress me.’ We presented our ideas and after the third script, he stopped us.

He took out a pen and paper, and wrote his own script. Then he read it aloud and asked, ‘Do you like it?’ ‘Yes, of course’ – what else could we say?

‘I like it!’ he said. ‘I’m going to get my team to look into this- just tell me what you need’.

Long story short, that day we sold 13 out of 15 scripts.” “Um, including the one Morten wrote?” “No, not the one he wrote- I think he was only joking.”

What started as a tactical campaign had somehow evolved into a brand campaign for DiGi. But before the yellow man went public, the agency had to introduce him to the rest of the DiGizens.

Challenge
Conventional coverage campaigns usually featured geographic locations. The Yellow Coverage Fellow was the first to put a face to the coverage story.

“The DiGi brand is a little eccentric and quirky,” said Alvin. “Which gave us the opportunity to introduce the fellow in a fun and unforgettable way. Except, for the staff, we couldn’t use TV and had to think of something more tactile.”

Truth
“The yellow man could be whatever we wanted him to be. Very early on, we decided that he wasn’t human. Sure, he looked human but he wasn’t. He may or may not be from earth,” said Alvin.

Answer
And so, early one morning, the staff at DiGi’s HQ in Shah Alam found a five-foot tall egg in the lobby. It started as a perfect egg-shaped egg. Smooth, flawless, yellow. And then it started to crack. Every day, the crack would get bigger and bigger.

Some of the staff would peel off the shell to see what was inside.

But it was pitch black and the agency made sure whatever it contained remained hidden.

About a week later, with everyone gathered in the lobby- there were 5 Yellow Coverage Fellows running around introducing themselves to the staff.

That same day, DiGi’s new 40-second TVC was launched across all channels (both FTA and cable TV) as well as on YouTube and DiGi’s internal server.

And that, dear readers, was how the Yellow Coverage Fellow- later referred to as the Yellow Man- burst into Malaysian pop culture.

Before long, he was invited to weddings, birthday parties, festivals and at one time, upon request, escorted a young girl to school.

There was even a yellow man at a school sports day. “Fan made. Ugliest yellow man ever,” said Alvin. “All the same, I think it’s a great honour to have your work plagiarised.

“We found badly drawn yellow man stickers in Johor, yellow man music CDs- comprising 10 techno versions of ‘I will follow you’ (the Yellow Man theme song)- in Penang, but not a single pirated yellow man t-shirt in Petaling Street. That sucks.”

An afternoon of conversations we never had, with leaders most of you never met.

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