U Mobile unites the nation under one race

(Marketingmagazine.com.my) – By Malati Siniah

Telco provider, U Mobile in its latest Bangsa Bola campaign, connected with local football enthusiast by tapping into the power of twitter to create a platform uniting fans under one hashtag.

The campaign was conceptualised as the telco brand was the sponsor of the Malaysian Piala FA and Liga Premier Malaysia. U Mobile wanted to find a way to truly engage with the local football community and put out content which spoke to them.

Speaking to MARKETING, Nazirah Ashari, Lead Digital Strategist at BBDO Malaysia, the agency that conceptualised the campaign, said that going beyond just a one-off campaign, Bangsa Bola was intended to be a platform connecting local football fans with engaging content that fuelled their passion.

Launched early this month, the Bangsa Bola (@KamiBangsaBola) twitter page has already gained a strong following of 5,922 fans. Twitter was the platform of choice, as it was where their target audience of young Malay football fans were already active in.

Nazirah shared that Twitter already had a number of renowned football-related Twitter accounts and the chosen name, Bangsa Bola did stir some buzz among local users. Most of the chatter, however, was due to people questioning if it was connected to the more well-known #BangsaJohor hashtag.

To clear the confusion and make in impact in the social sphere, they launched a 12 hour Bangsa Bola-thon, driven mainly on Twitter, with Facebook and Periscope used to highlight live video content, from 9am to 9pm on May 10th. Throughout this period, RM6,500 worth of prizes were given away.  

“The main agenda of Bangsa Bola-thon was driving Malaysian football conversations using the #KamiBangsaBola hashtag. This is what we call Borak Bola.”

Topical content ranging from the history of Malaysian football to slightly controversial topics such as the like privatisation of Malaysian football and the name Harimau Malaysia vs Harimau Malaya were tweeted by the hour.

“The most engaging topic was “Throwback Bola” as we touched hearts of fans, getting them to share their most memorable football moments. That slot became our second most engaging topic of the day.”

Through the Bangsa Bola-thon activity, #KamiBangsaBola became the no. 1 trending topic in Malaysia as confirmed by Twitter, Trends24 and Trendsmap. A number of 645.6k impressions with 3.5% engagement on Twitter was recorded.

Sharing his thoughts on the campaign John Teoh, General Manager, BBDO Malaysia said,

“I am extremely proud of this work coming from us at BBDO Malaysia. It demonstrates our increasing capabilities as a new-age creative agency – one that puts data, digital and content at the core of what we do for our Clients every day. It is, therefore, encouraging that we have Clients such as U Mobile who believe in pushing the limits in the realm of digital”

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• Fiona Liao – Chief Brand Officer, Prudential Assurance Malaysia

• Jasmine Lee – Chief Marketing Officer, U Mobile

• Jauhar Munir Shaikh – FVP, Brand Marketing for F&N Malaysia

• Loh Keh Jiat – CMO, Digi Telecommunications Sdn Bhd

• Mark Ng – ASEAN Marketing Director, Castrol

• Martin Soong – Marketing Manager, Fonterra Brands Malaysia

• Matthew Ho – Regional Digital Marketing Director, Huawei Technologies Malaysia

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