The Brief

After the two recent aviation disasters (MH370 and MH17) coming so close together, the Malaysian government officially declared a National Day of Mourning to be held on 22nd August 2014. A nationwide ‘minute of silence’ was to be observed across the country. We created a mobile website that offers our social active target audience unique means to observe this day of mourning. This public service campaign consist of direct marketing elements that uses a direct approach of social audiences with a clear call-to-action and a mobile website with a direct response mechanism delivered through mobile technology.

Creative Execution

On August 22nd, we launched a ‘Minute of Silence’ mobile website. Visitors were asked to enable ‘Airplane Mode’ on their devices. After the website detects that the user is disconnected, a one-minute countdown starts. The user is effectively dedicating his/her individual mourning minute by actively using the medium he/she spends so much time on. We used our owned media and the owned channels of our clients to seed the website. On channels that are more frequently visited from computers, such as our client’s corporate websites we included QR codes to make it easy for people to access the website from their mobile devices. To earn media we contacted influential blogs and news websites to feature the website. We also included a social toolkit within the website, which participants can download and use to promote the website on their own Facebook pages. No media was paid for this campaign.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

As a company which works closely with Malaysian government organisations and Malaysian companies – Mutiara Malaysia wished to develop a public service campaign with the goal to create a platform that would allow fellow Malaysians - and the rest of the world - to come together for a minute of respectful silence. In a country where online and mobile command an ever greater share of people’s daily attention - we targeted young and social active Malaysians that would continue to spend time online – on their mobile devices. Our strategy was to engage directly online and through their mobile devices.

Results

On Malaysia’s National Day of Mourning, thousands visited the website and disconnected for a minute. Thousands more downloaded our Social Toolkit and shared the site on their social media pages. International companies including L’Oréal, Mitsubishi, Mondelēz, Zurich and AIA Insurance responded and promoted ‘Minute of Silence’ on their social media pages and websites. Influential blogs featured the website, driving further awareness and participation. In November 2014, when the Netherlands held its National Day of Mourning for those who perished in the MH17 flight, Dutch news networks invited their citizens to visit the site to pay their respects. Up to June 2015, more than 60,000 individuals from 80 countries have accepted the invitation and ‘disconnected’.