Winning MediaWorks team doubles down on trust in choosing media

MediaWorks, Campaign Asia-Pacific's four-day online training experience for young media professionals, recently concluded with 'Team MediaStorm' indeed taking MediaWorks by storm. The winning team, whose members came from a variety of agencies and martech organisations, won the simulated pitch in response to a 'live brief' from NTUC Income which aimed at improving brand love amongst the older customer segment, above the age of 50.

The team's proposal first determined what life is like for 50+ Singaporeans, what daily challenges they faced, what they craved, and more to the brief, how they viewed insurance and what they used it for. Noting where this segment received their information from, how they were digitally estranged and craved human interaction, the team built out a creative concept and media plan to address issues in the customer journey that this segment faces, when buying insurance.

In the end, the team recognised the importance of human interaction with insurance agents in helping older consumers feel comfortable. They came up with the big idea concept of using a 'trust fall' across various segments of insurance with them being able to lean into 'Agent Alex' to 'have their back' in any situation of need.

"It's quite a good fit when we're talking about insurance," explained MindStorm member Johnny Chan during the presentation. "People don't know if a company or agent is trustworthy unless the crisis really happens. So we think that this concept can be closely related and a good way to visualise this."

The members of the winning team, known as MediaStorm: Johnny Chan, GroupM (Hong Kong)  Joy Liu, Amplifi (Taiwan) Miranda Chen, Carat (Taiwan) Neil Yan, EternityX (Hong Kong) Rahayu Fitriyanti, Vizeum/Carat (Indonesia) Haoyu Wang, Dentsu (China)   Mentor: Kiron Kesav, chief strategy officer, Omnicom Media Group

Interestingly, the team also incorporated trust as a critical driver into making media choices, by looking at Singapore's most trusted media sources, citing a Campaign and YouGov study. This played a role in ultimatley determining a fairly traditional media mix, including most trusted sources newspaper and TV to gain attention in the initial phases of the campaign.

But the strategy also includes media allowing more personalisation and engagement through out-of-home (OOH) using location data insights and dynamic liveposters, along with personalised content from YouTube and Facebook to relate to personal interests and family dynamics.

In its decision, the final judging panel appreciated MediaStorm's close attention to the brief and the level of thoroughness in researching each stage of the media campaign, with an exemplary presentation that was clear and methodical, with plenty of energy.

"Strategically, you understood the problem very well," said MediaWorks chair and judge Amrita Randhawa. "You showed some really solid thinking around where you would want to address it. Where we felt you needed to do a bit work was in thinking through the media channel tactics, choices and formats to make it a standout idea - to take the idea of the agent and make it live in media much more richly." 

While the judges suggested the team could have been more innovative in their suggestions around use of media, they acknowledged the team's plan and logic made perfect sense. 

"This is a completely workable media strategy that could be implemented right away, if needed." said Dhiren Amin, chief marketing officer at NTUC Income. "The basic premise of making the decision of media choices based on trust, was the right premise. It's the thinking that matters."

Runner-up team MindDots was commended for presenting a highly innovative media plan involving interactive OOH at bus shelters and new social app capabilities to build a stronger sense of community among senior Singaporeans, but ultimately was less closely-tied to the main tenets of the brief and the solution it was aiming to solve for. 

Campaign Asia-Pacific thanks the MediaWorks mentors and thought leaders who gave their time, expertise and enthusiasm. Mentors: Aditya Sofyan, strategic director, Dentsu X Anathea Ruys, CEO, UM Australia  Amrita Randhawa, CEO, Singapore & Southeast Asia, Publicis Groupe (chair) Ian Loon, CEO, Media, Digital, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Publicis Groupe Kiron Kesav, chief strategy officer, Omnicom Media Group Malu Vasallo, CEO, Wavemaker Philippines Sheila Shanmugam, CEO, Mindshare Group Malaysia Thought leader: Seema Punwani, Principal, R3 Worldwide

"Thanks for allowing us to put this brief forward," Amin said at the conclusion of MediaWorks. "

Randhawa, meanwhile urged the delegates to take their learnings from the workshop back to their workplaces and to continue pushing boundaries. 

"There is so much happening in the world of media today. There's so much innovation and so much possibility out there, so please stay curious. Please learn, please absorb, please test, please get into all the new media and try all the new formats and ask a ton of questions of what is possible, because you are the people who are going to design the future of marketing communications. Stay curious, stay learning, stay experimentative and most importantly, stay in media and stay passionate, because it's a great business where you really can make a big impact with the ideas you have.”

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MediaWorks Online 2022 was produced with the help of its supporting partner