Many businesses in the entertainment industry faced significant challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. With lockdowns hindering in-person events, live theatre productions found it difficult to fill seats, and faced issues with declining revenue.
Nonetheless, theatrical production company Global Creatures found a way to overcome these difficulties. This case study details how Global Creatures rose above the challenges brought by the pandemic, reviving revenue by promoting its landmark ‘Moulin Rouge! The Musical’ production through its collaboration with Quantcast and ACMN.
The Challenge
Like all businesses in the theatre industry, Global Creatures suffered a blow during the COVID-19 pandemic. With government-mandated lockdowns and health measures in place, attendance in theatres decreased, subsequently reducing revenue from ticket and merchandise sales.
Relaxed regulations in 2022 saw more people being comfortable going to theatres, prompting Global Creatures to promote ‘Moulin Rouge! The Musical’, but the company also faced increasing competition from other theatre and events businesses in doing so.
The Objectives
Global Creatures aimed to target new audiences for the musical, going beyond reaching its existing fans. While reaching as many viewers as possible, the goal was to drive more conversions through ticket sales. Global Creatures also sought to improve cost-per-acquisition (CPA) and return-on-ad-spend (ROAS) for advertising efficiency.
The Solutions
To meet these objectives, Global Creatures worked with ACMN, its appointed media agency, and Quantcast, its adtech partner.
Its first step revolved around identifying the right audiences. Using Quantcast’s repository of live first-party audience dataset, Global Creatures and ACMN found differences in the behaviours of musical fans before and after the pandemic. These insights helped in the targeting strategy, directing ads and the right messaging to fans more likely to purchase tickets.
To provide the right messaging and ad creatives for audiences, Global Creatures harnessed pixel technology and AI. Quantcast implemented pixels on Global Creatures’ website, developing a stream of data that recognised its target audiences’ digital behavioural patterns in real-time. Quantcast then used AI to create brand-specific predictive models for each campaign. Through this strategy, Quantcast was able to determine the right audience to serve the ad, depending on their score and level of intent, providing efficiency.
Using conversion insights, Global Creatures optimised the campaign targeting in real-time, reaching both new prospects and site visitors who have dropped off to encourage more ticket bookings. It also delivered relevant ads to high-value customers to encourage more spend.
The Results
The strategy allowed Global Creatures to successfully reach new audiences for ‘Moulin Rouge! The Musical,’ encouraging them to return to the theatres. Global Creatures was able to drive ticket sales with 55% more efficient CPA, exceeding its initial goal. Additionally, the company reached 348 times more return on ad spend, 71% better than its aim.
Data-driven strategies have become a requirement for businesses across sectors to engage customers. For companies operating across markets in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, the challenge heightens. To meet the customers’ needs for personalisation and seamless interaction, traditional methods may be insufficient.
FedEx, a transportation, e-commerce, and business services provider, has found its traditional customer segmentation based on last shipment data ineffective to personalise experiences for its customers, lacking nuances in the approach.
Although its ‘Always On’ campaigns have long been rolling out monthly in APAC to address all customer lifecycle (CLC) stages, the company sees the need to boost its strategy to continue engaging its customers.
This case study digs deeper into FedEx’s strategy to engage its customers from initial acquisition to long-term retention and reactivation through tailored campaigns.
The Challenge
Prior to having CLC models, companies like FedEx may rely on last shipment data for customer engagement. However, this has proven ineffective due to the lack of granularity in segmenting customers. FedEx needs extensive data sources to gain various dimensions that affect customer engagement, navigating the challenge of personalisation for different audiences in the vast market.
Additionally, FedEx found limitations in its initial set of CLC campaigns in 2021 with its previous email platform provider, which were static with fixed email sequences triggered by events. These campaigns also took significant time and effort from the email team when setting them up quarterly.
The Objectives
With the aim of addressing the CLC stages, FedEx’s objectives cover the entire cycle with the ‘Always On’ campaign’s nurture, grow or retain, and reactivation phases. Specifically, the company aims to acquire new customers, grow its active customers’ ‘share-of-wallet’, and win back its lapsed customers and revenue.
The Solution
With its need for scalability, automation, and personalisation, FedEx collaborated with Salesforce professional services to develop multiple CLC campaigns targeting various segments. Each customer segment, including prospects, new joiners, active and dormant customers received tailored email journeys. Through different campaigns, FedEx’s objectives of converting leads, engaging new customers, and reactivating lapsed ones were addressed. The campaigns also used English and local languages to cater to 14 APAC markets and ensure cultural relevance.
Additionally, it also allowed the FedEx team to build and manage campaigns in-house, upskilling its marketing operations team for future campaign automation. The team conducted internal testing, developed reusable templates, and automated the customer registration process.
To further reduce its reliance on external support, FedEx worked on building, testing, and deploying its emails for customers using an Excel template. A self-service platform, also created by the marketing operations team, turns the file into an email and sends it to customers once campaign owners are satisfied with it.
Furthermore, they created a self-service platform that enables non-technical campaign owners to build and deploy emails using Excel, eliminating the need for complex technical skills and Salesforce expertise. This solution has been implemented in various APAC markets, leading to campaign efficiency.
The Results
Through the new strategy, FedEx’s campaigns across the CLC stages led to a growing customer base and revenue. It also significantly saved the company’s hours by 60% to 80%, with the automated campaign needing only a one-time set-up, ready to be sent to different customer groups. The strategy also allowed for scalability and flexibility, leading to improved customer engagement.
Digital banks are reshaping the financial industry with convenient, fully online services that prioritise accessibility and efficiency. To stay competitive in this growing sector, they must adopt innovative solutions that enhance customer experience and streamline operations.
Conversational AI plays a crucial role in this transformation, offering real-time, personalized support while automating routine tasks. By improving customer satisfaction and operational efficiency, AI enables digital banks to scale services effectively without compromising quality, making it a vital tool in today’s tech-driven market.
In this case study, we explore how Tonik Bank, a leading digital bank in the Philippines, leveraged Gupshup’s Conversation Cloud—powered by advanced AI and automation tools—to enhance customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
The Challenge
As a digital-first bank, Tonik aimed to stand out by delivering a seamless, efficient customer experience superior to traditional banks. To meet the demands of its growing user base, the bank sought innovative solutions to reduce response times, automate routine tasks, enhance customer satisfaction and engagement, and boost operational efficiency while cutting costs.
Tonik recognised that addressing these challenges would not only retain existing customers but also attract new users to its platform.
The Objective
Tonik outlined clear goals for its partnership with Gupshup:
Enable instant access to customer support and information.
Reduce reliance on traditional channels by adopting AI-driven solutions.
Deliver personalised and efficient customer interactions.
Enhance operational efficiency by automating routine tasks.
By achieving these objectives, Tonik aimed to establish itself as a leader in customer experience while scaling its operations cost-effectively.
The Solution
To address Tonik’s objectives, Gupshup implemented a comprehensive strategy leveraging Generative AI and automation technologies. At the core of this approach was the integration of a Generative AI-powered chatbot tailored specifically for Tonik’s mobile app. This advanced chatbot managed a wide range of customer interactions, providing instant responses to queries, engaging in contextual and personalised conversations, and assisting with routine banking tasks such as balance inquiries and transactions.
In addition to enhancing responsiveness, Gupshup automated routine customer service tasks, allowing human agents to concentrate on more complex, high-value interactions. This shift not only improved the efficiency of the customer care team but also significantly reduced response times.
To improve AI accuracy and reduce manual retraining, Gupshup took a multi-model approach combining Gupshup’s fine-tuned ACE LLM (built atop foundational models) with traditional NLP models, optimizing for latency, response quality, and cost-effectiveness.
As a result, the chatbot now autonomously resolves 75% of customer queries, covering a wide range of topics from FAQs about account opening and information about loan products. This significantly reduces the need for human intervention. Additionally, ACE LLM’s fine-tuning reduces AI hallucinations, ensuring high accuracy and reliability.
To ensure sustained success, Gupshup established regular feedback loops and performance reviews, continuously optimizing the system for maximum effectiveness and adaptability.
The Result
The partnership between Tonik and Gupshup yielded remarkable results, showcasing the power of Generative AI in transforming digital banking.
Customer satisfaction saw a significant boost, with the AI chatbot enhancing response times and achieving a 45% increase in customer satisfaction ratings. Operational efficiency also improved, as automation allowed the customer care team to operate 4.3 times more efficiently while reducing costs associated with manual query handling.
The AI chatbot demonstrated exceptional performance, routing 9 out of 10 customer queries through the in-app chat feature, achieving an AI accuracy rate of 95%. This success in automation not only streamlined processes but also enhanced the overall user experience.
This initiative is expected to save over USD 20 million in operational costs for Tonik Bank over the next three years, contributing to a significant increase in productivity while maintaining a headcount growth rate below 20%.
***
Tonik Bank’s partnership with Gupshup highlights the power of conversational AI in banking. By automating tasks and improving customer interactions, Tonik enhanced its customer experience and achieved significant operational efficiency. This success sets a standard for innovative, customer-focused digital banking in a competitive financial landscape.
Engaging niche audiences through marketing campaigns is vital for business growth. However, reaching these audiences can be more complicated than it seems, needing certain nuances and messages that are highly relevant.
To thrive in the market as a stand-out investment platform, IG has collaborated with Yahoo to launch a data-driven campaign that is aimed at increasing engagement for its platform.
This case study delves into IG’s challenges and its strategies to solve them with its partnership with Yahoo as it leveraged technology and identity solutions to reach niche users.
Challenge
Investment platform IG wanted to widen prospects for its CFD trading feature, a derivative trading method that would appeal the most to advanced traders who are familiar with financial markets. Wanting to achieve maximum impact while targeting highly relevant users, IG tapped Yahoo for a campaign that was hyper-focused on reaching a specific set of audiences and pushing them towards meaningful action.
Objectives
IG’s goal is to target a highly niche audience such as active traders, investment seekers, and high-net-worth individuals, driving them to action. IG aims to gain new investors and encourage more users on its platform.
Solution
IG’s solution is a strategy that leveraged AI and sophisticated identity solutions to reach a niche audience, delivering a 6-fold increase in clickthrough rates with a cost-per-land efficiency that exceeded 35% compared to similar campaigns by IG.
Singapore has a vibrant retail investor market across all ages, with a majority of Singapore investors remaining actively invested throughout bull and bear conditions. A 2023 survey showed that about 67% of Singaporeans said their investment goal was to build wealth over time and 75% have also maintained or even raised their risk levels over the past twelve months.
Wanting to acquire new investors on its platform and encourage more users to utilise their platform for CFD trading, a high-level form of trading that lets users trade based on price movements, IG embarked on a campaign with OMD Singapore and the Yahoo Demand-Side Platform (DSP) to reach their key audience.
The strategy? To go wide and long on a niche market of experienced and ambitious investors – a sub-group of traders well-versed with financial markets – and drive them to register for a new account on IG’s platform.
With the goal to target a highly niche audience in mind, the campaign needed to maintain optimum relevance. Additionally, with competitors also gunning for the limited audience pool, the strategy needed to be anchored on a deep understanding of audiences, their needs and interests. The campaign would also require the ability to adapt and implement analysis and insights in real-time to optimise ad delivery and ensure the right type of audience sees the message, at scale. This set a cutting-edge approach in motion: programmatic ads, powered by a potent combination of AI and identity solutions, to power rich yet precise targeting of audience profiles that would maximise impressions and deliver optimum performance.
Establishing a strong base of a highly niche group of users at scale – active traders, investment seekers, and high-net-worth individuals – entailed a sophisticated and privacy-centric mix of identity solutions that utilised Yahoo’s first-party data alongside identifiers of users that have visited IG’s website.
Data security and respecting data privacy were of utmost importance, especially as this cohort was more likely to be more conscious of how their data is used than the average user.
First – the campaign sought to prospect segments of people who were likely to be interested in high-return investments. Using Yahoo’s first-party data, based on anonymised content consumption and interest data such as investment seekers and those interested in exchange-traded fund (ETF) investments, the campaign planned to reach precise first-party audience segments such as high net-worth individuals.
Second – the campaign also prospected people who were already actively trading. Prospecting these audiences meant employing cross-screen data signals from purchase receipts and mail domains of active traders and investment seekers – including those who have subscribed to investment-related mail domains and services.
Predictive Audiences, powered by Yahoo Blueprint, further set the stage for robust targeting plan by utilising an artificial intelligence (AI)-based algorithm with over one million dimensions to accurately identify and reach audiences with a high propensity for conversion.
The campaign then implemented insights from Dot Pixel to expand the audience pool through the creation of lookalike audiences. Dot Pixel also enabled a stronger and more collaborative re-engagement tactic of IG’s website visitors alongside lookalike audiences.
Having reached a highly niche cohort at scale, the next step involved quickly applying insights to refine the campaign and ensure close alignment with audience needs. This required a sophisticated arsenal of tools that would help IG and Yahoo maximise this impact.
For this purpose, the campaign activated Yahoo Blueprint, a central AI suite that powers performance-based solutions within the Yahoo DSP that optimises goals across the entire campaign lifecycle, enhancing decisioning and driving performance with AI-powered audience insights and recommendations.
With a mix of AI and identity solutions to create a complete and in-depth picture of the audience, Yahoo Blueprint’s enhanced capabilities would enable 10x more data processing, ensuring campaign success through robust AI-enabled predictions and insights. Omniscope, an algorithmic forecasting tool within Yahoo Blueprint that is powered by over a million data signals and bid request data, was also used to accurately plan and compare projected reach and performance of different targeting parameters, including audience segments, across various channels.
At the activation and optimisation stage, creatives with direct messaging and strong design were deployed to target experienced and ambitious traders – resolute decision-makers who are often pressed for time. The target audience was urged to take immediate action through creatives and messaging that highlighted IG’s strongest points as a CFD trading platform upfront, including its extended trading hours for over 70 US shares.
Yahoo Blueprint’s insights provided guidance and projections for the bidding process, as well as ad delivery and efficiency. These helped fine-tune bids, adjust spend pacing based on budget, and target the right person, at the right time and place for maximum efficiency and performance.
Results
Amid a highly competitive market for trading platforms, IG carved out an edge in a highly niche space, achieving a dual combo of efficiency and performance by leveraging a future-forward arsenal of AI capabilities and privacy-centric identity solutions powered by rich first-party data.
A testament to its precision, the optimisation through Yahoo Blueprint and a sophisticated mix of identity and first-party data solutions effectively drove momentum for the campaign’s performance, achieving the following:
Implementation of Yahoo Blueprint from the onset and throughout the campaign lifecycle ensured deep understanding and insights to efficiently prospect and reach niche audiences.
Cost-per-land efficiency that exceeded 35% compared to similar campaigns by IG that did not utilise Yahoo Blueprint
6 times higher clickthrough rates (CTR) compared to similar campaigns by IG that did not utilise Yahoo Blueprint
With outstanding outcomes in efficiency and effectiveness, IG renewed its campaign with OMD Singapore and Yahoo DSP for another 4 months.
Against the challenge of reaching niche audiences and spurring them to action, IG, OMD Singapore and Yahoo DSP effectively leveraged the capabilities of sophisticated identity solutions and AI-driven Yahoo Blueprint to power audience understanding, insights and decision-making to secure a winning investment.
“IG was keen on targeting a highly niche group of investors, a cohort of people with very specific needs and wants, who would be interested in utilising their platform for specialised investment methods. Looking to deliver results at scale and more, our strategy harnessed the power of identity solutions and AI to sharpen the campaign’s focus towards highly relevant user profiles. Fully utilising Yahoo Blueprint’s performance-based solutions, the campaign delivered outstanding outcomes, offering purpose and value for investors and realising desired results for IG’s business,” Kenneth Koh, head of commercial sales in SEA at Yahoo, said.
“At IG, we look for high-impact and effective ways to reach the most relevant audiences that would resonate with our various investment offerings. Yahoo helped us tremendously in capturing the attention of the potential investors – highly experienced traders who would be interested in our CFD trading service – and effectively hear our message. The results have been outstanding and we look forward to exploring greater possibilities in the next phase with Yahoo,” Rafael Victorino, marketing executive at IG, said.
The start of the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns brought Malaysians lives to a hold. Contained at home, Malaysians were cooking more at home and ordering less delivery. This posed a challenge to quick-service restaurants like KFC who had difficulty sustaining growth as a delivery brand. However, a new pandemic trend was fast on the rise, and that people were looking at their kitchens to provide them with a sense of fulfillment.
This is what Reprise, Mediabrands’ digital creative agency in Malaysia, realized. The pandemic was a chance to showcase culinary skills to friends and family and connect with the world outside. Reprise took the idea to fuel this creativity by offering KFC as an ingredient!
With KEPCI KITCHEN, Reprise turned Malaysian Kitchens into KFC Kitchens, built digital cookbooks, helped Instagram chefs display creativity, and in the process became much more popular as a delivery brand.
Malaysians asked, “How long can we keep ordering food on delivery?”
The initial Movement Control Order (MCO) saw all brands growing delivery sales, with KFC seeing an uplift of +49% in just one month. This peak soon plateaued as Malaysians asked themselves amid fears of job loss and uncertainty – how long can we keep ordering food on delivery?
The new enemy of QSR came in the form of home cooking!Malaysian households found themselves tightening their wallets and prioritizing essentials over delivery services. The country started seeing a gradual shift towards cheaper and healthier options with cooking at home. A study conducted at the end of March 2020 indicated that 62% of Malaysians said they were more inclined to cook at home.
The Challenge: How could KFC sustain business & delivery growth? KFC has a long-standing reputation as being a family brand. To sustain KFC’s growth via delivery, the fast-food chain had to make sure that its biggest fans – families – kept on ordering from them.
Our low-hanging fruit: Families. As a family brand, these were KFC’s natural audiences. Instead of cooking a meal for the entire family, KFC wanted to offer them a convenient and affordable option in KFC’s shareable buckets. However, along with sustaining momentum, the restaurant had to grow. For this, it needed to connect with the largest group of fast-food consumers in Malaysia.
Teens & Young Adults – the new territory for growth. This was the high-value market. They ordered more frequently, with a higher-order value per person. Reprise looked to see how KFC could drive offers on individual meals and cater to this audience, amid dominance from other QSR players.
The Objective: Getting a foot in the door to achieve 3 things
With the Campaign, KFC aims to achieve three things. Even amid the rising trend in home cooking, the brand’s objective is to make more people order KFC Delivery: to double the incidence and volume share of the delivery channel within its touchpoints within 3 months.
Second, it eyes to make KFC more popular in the delivery market by achieving two things: a.) growing the “Most Often Used Brand” by 50%, and b.) growing the “Brand Ever Used” by 50%.
Lastly, KFC wants teens & young adults to switch to KFC by increasing teens & young adults’ visitations for delivery by +10%.
One of the biggest challenges for KFC and Reprise is how could the KFC brand simultaneously connect with two separate audiences – its stronghold of families and the avenue for growth with teens/ young adults. Reprise realized that it could not convince such a large segment to change their minds, nor take on a mammoth enemy like home cooking.
Campaign Strategy & Insights
An interesting trend Reprise observed was that social media shares were increasingly devoted to “Lockdown Cooking”. Globally, everyone was keen on showing their innovative results in kitchens – be it Dalgona coffee or sourdough bread. As millions of people were deprived of regular jobs, curbed with available activities, and a limited social life, they felt useless and non-productive. That is where the kitchen came in!
The Cultural Insight
A period of non-productivity had become a time for creativity. Kitchen Creativity was fueling a way for millions of people globally to feel productive, purposeful, and fulfilled. Amid this excitement to create, Reprise asked themelves: how could KFC contribute to this game of Kitchen Creativity?
Our strategy: Repurpose KFC’s product from a fully prepared meal to an INGREDIENT
KEPCI KITCHEN: Turning every Malaysian kitchen into a KFC kitchen
Campaign Execution
Reprise’s premise was simple: Encourage Malaysians to order KFC Delivery by showing them how to use their KFC favorites more creatively through simple and convenient recipes for the family, and menu hacks for teens & young adults.
Launch: Introducing the Kepci Kitchen Instagram stories cookbook
We kicked off the campaign with the launch of our first six recipes that catered directly to the different MCO personalities – For the lazy one-pot cooks all chef; For the enlightened health & fitness junkie; For the gamer, the Netflix binger; For the one that misses the mamak; For the one that misses the warung (simple suburban café); For the one that misses ‘atas’ (upmarket) western joints.
During the early stages of lockdown, local and international campaigns showed many similarities. We saw a growing trend of cooking at home and were inspired by menus that were crafted to fit into Instagram stories. Tapping into this trend, we kept the approach both natural and grounded. Malaysians are known to be great foodies and this campaign allowed them to unleash their creativity and connect with one another through these unprecedented times.
Amir Faiz, Group Creative Director, Reprise Digital
All recipes were uploaded onto the KFC Instagram account, and stored in our highlights bar to create a digital cookbook shelf where Malaysians could browse and screencap our recipes, just like a real cookbook. From the get-go, we ensured that all recipes were easy to make with accessible and simple ingredients (due to MCO restrictions) while also championing our core favorites.
A PDF of the compiled recipes, presented as a cookbook, was also hosted on the KFC website
Reprise and KFC worked with Instagram chefs & foodies to create a new set of recipes that were broken down into three categories: big eats (5-6 pax, family sharing), mid eats (2-3 pax), and individual eats. This was to ensure that our two key audience groups could relate to KFC’s diverse body of recipes, providing an endless stream of ideas to remix their KFC orders.
A selection of influencers was carefully selected to appeal to the audience. Each of their postings had a clear CTA to purchase products featured and promoted KFC’s free delivery code.
Reaching a wider audience on TV
To extend KFC’s reach to its core audience and align with the increase in TV viewership in April, KFC embarked on a four-episode sponsorship with the TV3 program “Dari Dapur Saya Ke Dapur Anda” (From my kitchen to yours). All episodes were also uploaded on TV3’s YouTube, Instagram and Facebook page which broadcasted the series to a collective base of 8 million social followers & subscribers. With the cooking show being led by a well-known local influencer Sharifah Shahirah cooking up Ramadan recipes.
Not only did KFC repurpose its product, but Reprise found an innovative way to ride on Malaysia’s desire to cook at home, creating new occasions and new ways of consuming KFC. Thus, Reprise found its strategy to combat Malaysia’s newfound desire for home meals!
Thelockdown has shown us tremendous opportunities for brands in the digital space. At a time where life as we knew it came to a stop, it is definitely inspiring to showcase how nothing could stop creativity. It proves that an honest, down-to-earth creative solution can connect in such a meaningful way with Malaysians. The results were beyond our wildest expectations!
Eddy Nazarullah, Creative Director, Reprise Digital
Results & Achievements
Reprise and KFC’s crusade to turn every Malaysian kitchen into a Kepci Kitchen exceeded all expectations. For its first objective of making more people order KFC Delivery, it was able to overshoot itstargets by a mile with KFC’s incidence growing 15x while volume share growing 11x.
It was also able to hit its second objective which is to Make KFC more popular in the delivery market. According to Reprise, results were beyond the team’s wildest expectations. “Brand ever used” grew by 65% while “Most often brand” grew by 80%.
Lastly, it was able to get teens & young adults to switch to KFC. Teens visitations increased by +19%, while KFC’s competitor dropped a staggering -76%. A similar trend was also observed among young adults which grew by +24% but dropped by -68% for KFC’s competitor.
Kepci Kitchen won the hearts, minds, and stomachs of families, foodies, millennials, and celebrities alike. We were amazed by the noise and how it drove results, and this is solid proof of the agility of the agency partners and KFC team working hand in hand to adapt to the challenging circumstances. Its proof that despite adversity, we’re still able to find gems of inspiration.
Chan May Ling, Chief Marketing Officer of KFC
The campaign period ran from 2 April – 2 June, 2020.
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