The Brief

Credit card usage in Malaysia is typically highest during festive occasions with Christmas and Chinese New Year being two key festive occasions. Despite fierce competition from other banks, Standard Chartered Bank Malaysia (SCB) sought to achieve its objective of increasing its credit spend by 15% year-on-year during the festive period. Although SCB offered attractive spend & win prizes ranging from TVs, mobile phones and iPhone speakers, its promotional concept would need to stand out from the multitude of festive promotions offered by competing banks

Describe how the promotion developed from concept to implementation

Multi-cultural Malaysia’s many different cultural festivals usually ends up in a ‘holiday mash-up’ when they occur close together eg when the Hindu Deepavali festival falls within weeks of the Muslim celebration of Hari Raya, its known as DeepaRaya, when Hari Raya occurs close to the Chinese lunar new year, its known as Kongsi Raya. With 2012’s Chinese New Year occurring shortly after Christmas, SCB leveraged the concept of the holiday mash-ups to offer a prolonged festive promotion… ‘Santa’s Chinese New Year’. In this campaign, Santa Claus and the Chinese God of Prosperity interacted across print, outdoor, radio and online.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

The campaign was a massive success with the outdoor executions being particularly eye catching and effective. The primary objective was achieved with spending on SCB credit cards growing by 19% year-on-year. In addition, the campaign also saw: • 32% increase in card usage from non-promotion months • 450% increase in usage amongst low usage or inactive cardmembers during the promotion • 22% of cardmembers maintaining the same quantum of spend post-campaign The result helped Standard Chartered Bank Malaysia win the award for the ‘Bank with the Best Spend’ in Visa International’s yearly Bank Awards

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

Whilst conventional promotion methods relied on offering the biggest, most attractive prizes possible, saavy credit card customers are often reluctant to participate as the promotions typically required a large amount of spend in a short promotion window in order to have a single chance of winning. Thus resulting in low perceived chances of winning any credit card contest. By mashing up two traditional gift giving and high spending festive occasions, thus running a promotional campaign that carried over from the Christmas period till the end of Chinese New Year, SCB gave its credit customers more reasons to spend with them, more time to enter and thus more chances to win its prizes.