The Campaign

The music we listen to reflects our mood, and our mood affects the way we taste our food. This insight led us to the idea of delivering a unique food selection experience based on shoppers’ music profiles and moods. We called it, ‘The Mood Menu’. The Mood Menu detects shoppers’ moods based on their most recent playback on Spotify. The proprietary algorithm analysed users’ music - from the genre, tempo, volume, and even the songs they had on repeat - to identify how our shoppers were truly feeling (e.g. happy, sad, stressed, etc). The feature than suggested a restaurant within IPC that would elevate or counter the user’s mood. Through the Mood Menu, IPC leveraged on technology to solve Malaysians’ daily dilemma of “what to eat?, by recommending food that matched their mood, while rewarding them with promotions to try out its new F&B offerings.

The Brief

Overall/Paid Media budget = RM220,000 (SGD72,600) Cost Breakdown: KOL/Influencers = MYR90,000.00 (SGD29,700) Spotify Audio + Ad Buy = MYR120,000.00 (SGD39,600) Facebook Ads = MYR10,000.00 (SGD3,300)

Creative Execution

Instead of using our brand to do the hard-selling, we developed a digital PR program using ten content creators and influencers to get the word out on the newly launched IPC app. In total, they created a total of 22 different videos that ranged from short films, vlogs, music videos, sitcoms, romcoms, parodies and infomercials that hero-ed the Mood Menu to their considerable fanbases. At the same time, we drove buzz around IPC on Facebook, Instagram and Spotify, running ads to highlight to Malaysian shoppers that the answer to “What to eat?” lay in their hands, literally, getting them to download the IPC app and use it to its fullest. To maximise awareness within the shopping centre, we also installed hoardings and posters that would encourage in-store shoppers to download and experiment with the app.

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

App Downloads: The IPC Shopping Centre mobile app obtained 39,825 downloads within a span of less than 5 months - that’s 4 times (400%) the targeted number of downloads (10,000) for the year. The app became the #1 trending lifestyle app on Google Play Store in June 2018 with a rating of 4.4 out of 5 stars. At one point, our app even ranked above Tinder! Source: Apple App Store & Google Play Store (7 February - 31 July 2018) Driving Promotions: The Mood Menu managed to drive 3,294 promo redemptions, exceeding our target (3,000 redemptions) by 10% - a massive win for IPC’s tenants and for the brand. Source: IPC Shopping Centre Tenant Sales Report Follow up: Following our initial success, we re-calibrated our initial goal for app downloads to 50,000 downloads by the year-end and our goal is to become the most engaging shopping centre app.

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

As the world’s first and only app feature to integrate personal music data with cutting-edge food science, IPC’s Mood Menu redefines the way a shopping centre app engages with its consumers. As part of IPC shopping centre’s recent brand relaunch, we transformed a retail mobile app solution into a highly personalised unique brand experience, offering shoppers a customised shopping adventure that allows them to discover the many food retail options based on their moods.

In addition to the scientific insight that our moods affect our food experiences, we also wanted to address a core human insight - the daily Malaysian conundrum of “what to eat?” - the exact question to which the Mood Menu answers. In collaboration with music streaming giant Spotify, and world-renowned taste psychologist, Professor Robin Dando, PhD, of Cornell University, we developed the proprietary algorithm behind the Mood Menu. The algorithm was based on Professor Dando’s 2015 landmark study on how human moods inhibit or accentuate sweet, salty, bitter, sour, or umami (savoury) flavours. With these research findings and Spotify’s rich user data, IPC was able to translate user’s existing behavior into a personalised discovery of IPC’s F&B retail options. During the brand launch in 2018, we debuted the Mood Menu as the world’s first and only app feature that recommends restaurant choices based on the shopper’s mood.