CASE STUDY: UM Malaysia employs avatars to drive RHB online banking

Background

With competition heating up in the Malaysian online banking sector, the country’s fourth largest fully integrated financial service group, RHB Banking Group, had fallen behind competitors in keeping its offering fresh and relevant. Essentially, RHB’s online banking services were fairly basic.
 
CIMB, a competitor, had a mascot to represent the youthful and fresh face of its online banking product, and Maybank aggressively positioned itself as having the most advanced online banking services.  Still, the offering of even these competitors lagged behind international standards.
 
Aim

Seeing an opportunity to not only improve its own online banking but overtake the standards of its competitors, RHB invested heavily in improving both its services and the look of its online banking site. The bank also brought aboard Paypal through an exclusive collaboration to make online payments easier for its customers. The aim was to then drive interest and take-up of RHB's online banking services.

Strategy

To generate buzz for RHB's new online services, UM came up with the insight that in the digital world, individual profiles and characters are represented in the form of ‘avatars.’  

Seen as the poster children for the digital world, these avatars, or digital natives, were used to carry the message of RHB’s improved online banking into the real, physical world.

It was recognised that having these avatars speak for RHB’s online offering would represent an immense stamp of approval both for the online community and real-life Malaysians.  
 
But this wasn't a typical print and online communications campaign. In addition to appearing in print advertisements, conversations were created both online and in the real world by igniting a mystery involving the appearance of ‘strange-looking characters’ in the country’s capital city, Kuala Lumpur.

Execution

The real-life avatars suddenly appeared to protest the current state of online banking. The avatars were spotted on public transportation, at the Convention Center, and in other well-known locations in Kuala Lumpur.

Their messages on placards outlined Malaysians’ aspirations regarding online banking services, and linked these aspirations to RHB’s new online banking offering.

‘Online registration does not mean in line’, read one placard, referring to the fact that people usually need to go to the bank to register for online banking.  RBH, however, now allowed its banking customers to register online.

‘Life’s too short to pay one at a time,’ read another placard, referring to the functionality of RBH’s online banking system to allow multiple payments at once.

At this stage of the story, although stunned, nobody knew who was behind the campaign and these avatars protesting in Kuala Lumpur about online banking services.

So the word of RHB’s mysterious protesting avatars was spread by seeding videos on YouTube, blogs, Facebook and Twitter.  Posts sparked conversations and questions about the avatars online, on TV and popular radio.  All this talk amplified the impact and mounting buzz around RHB’s campaign.
 
The results

People shared news of the RHB avatars with friends by re-blogging, posting on Facebook, and tweeting about the incident.  The total campaign generated eight million views.

Knowledge about RHB and its re-vamped online banking services skyrocketed, catapulting RHB into one of the leading online banking services in Malaysia.  And importantly, Malaysians fell in love with the avatars, which they continued to see in print advertisements.