Malaysia – Global brand and customer experience agency VMLY&R Singapore has announced they have won the tender for insurance company FWD Takaful’s new mental health awareness campaign in Malaysia.
FWD’s unconventional pitch aims to produce a campaign that targets overcoming Malaysian cultural taboos around talking about mental health. It further aims to normalise and destigmatize this issue across the country by highlighting the benefits of having conversations about negative feelings.
VMLY&R’s upcoming campaign, in partnership with content experience agency Hogarth Malaysia, will tap into Malaysia’s love of music to raise awareness and generate conversations around mental health. It will run for three months, starting in January 2024, and is outlined to include film, video, digital, EDM, out-of-home (OOH), event activation, and radio promotion.
The campaign pitch comes after the company’s mental health survey in 2022 revealed that 62% of Malaysians have experienced mental health challenges and severe social disapproval or know someone who has.
Further solidifying the company’s commitment to their upcoming campaign, FWD Takaful took the topic of mental health to heart through the pitch process itself, which focused on reducing anxiety and stress for participating agencies.
The insurance company created a process that minimises the stressors for teams involved in competitive pitching, including unrealistic client briefs, timelines, expectations, and budgets.
For this to happen, FWD Takaful worked closely with the pitching agencies on an open creative brief, which could be delivered on a flexible timeline, while simultaneously giving them access to FWD’s Mind Strength services.
Raymond Chin, chief creative officer for Asia at VMLY&R, said, “Social change starts with a conversation, and talking about your problems can offer serious relief, so the new campaign aims to highlight this point and encourage open conversation in Malaysia as an antidote to the current stigma.”
He added, “It was refreshing to work on a pitch where the client understood the issues faced by agency teams and was willing to create a pitch brief that made the agencies’ mental health a priority. Everyone benefitted from the way FWD Takaful ran this pitch—the client got better ideas out of it, and the agency team was able to dedicate time and resources while making sure their mental health was taken care of.”
