“Brake- Faster- Macha” and “Bribe-Free-Malaysian”, phrases on car stickers seen on many vehicles, are part of the successful campaign that made BFM a well known name within the business and white collar community. Despite the lack of resources to compete with the giants in the category, the synergy of creative thinking and effective channel planning to communicate BFM’s offering of intelligence relevant to Malaysians has proven to be more than effective. “Broke FM Monopoly”? Yes, BFM did.
What was our strategic communications challenge?
Electronic media in Malaysia is dominated by two conglomerates- Media Prima and Astro. Both of them have grown from big to bigger using their resources, their clout, effective cross-selling among their media assets and highly targeted content. Breaking into this category as you can well imagine is no easy task. For example, in the last decade, independent radio stations without the backing of a media conglomerate have come and gone with not so much as even a splash.
This was the challenge before Business FM or BFM. Although the proposition behind the brand to offer content specifically for the business and professional audience was unique, BFM did not have the resources compete with the more established players in the market.
What were our campaign objectives?
Our campaign’s objective was challenging and brief; make BFM known within the business and professional audience in Klang Valley with a limited budget.
Multiple variables had been identified to define the success of creating a name for BFM. These included:
a) Growth in followership.
- BFM does not participate in Nielsen Radio Audience Measurement because the study only recruits respondents from home during daylight hours. The research methodology contradicts with BFM’s intention to target professionals who are typically out of home. As such, several indicators have been identified to act as proxies to gauge the growth of listenership, namely the recruitment of followers on its social community sites and hits on its website.
- BFM’s challenge was to match its competitors in numbers of followers.
b) To grow 7 times (600%) in revenue from advertisers compared to the same period in the previous year.
- Advertising revenue has always been the best gauge of the success of a media entity.
c) Quality of recruited listeners to match the intended audience of the affluent business and professional audience.
- We need to ensure that our campaign has effectively targeted the intended audience.
What was our big idea?
Intelligence made relevant to educated, urban Malaysians.
How did you arrive at the big idea?
This was challenging because we had to find a strong enough niche that our more established competitors could not react to but a niche that would still generate revenue for the brand. Through extensive segmentations and deep diving in the Malaysian Diaspora we found our focus to be the urban intelligentsia; an audience that was affluent but starved of relevant content. And that meant that we had to be honest, innovative and without the fluff or bias that this audience often regarded existing content to be.
The three elements that came to be at the core of our idea included being impartial, being intelligent and being witty. For so long our target audience had been either choosing to consume foreign media for content with depth or local radio stations only for entertainment. This defined an unmet need that we could potentially fulfill.
How did you bring the idea to life?
Our elements of impartiality, intelligence and wit naturally led to defining current business and general affairs on the acronym of our brand, BFM.
A campaign was created based on a series of phrases based on the letters BFM. The idea was current, adaptable, relevant and intelligent. The idea could easily move across languages and could reflect the mood of the intelligentsia on a myriad of current affairs. Topics like the bribery, US Election, oil prices, the F1 and even Sharukh Khan’s receipt of his Datukship provided fodder for the campaign.
Taking into consideration the limited budget and therefore choices of media to advertise on, our primary media investment was where radio was most consumed - on the road. Taxi-backs became our primary medium. And if the lines were witty enough even regular drivers would want to place them on their cars; namely “Brake Faster Macha” & “Bribe Free Malaysian”, which became free advertising for us.
We also published this series of witty phrases in The Edge, and advertised in strategic spots in MPH bookstores, as we realized the strategic fit of their readers/ customers to our targeted audience.
How do you know it worked?
1. As explained in our objective, the success of growth in listenership will be based on the reading of proxy variables as BFM does not participate in Nielsen RAM.
a) Facebook group membership grew by 191% compared to the previous year and is ahead of most of its competitors.
May 2009: 2502 pax
May 2010: 4790 pax
Benchmarked against Mix FM- 4922 pax, Red FM- 4728 pax, Lite FM- 1388 pax
b) Twitter followers grew by 564% compared to the previous year and is far ahead than all of its direct competitors.
BFM Twitter account commenced Apr 6, 2009
May 2009 : 385 pax
May 2010 : 2173 pax
Benchmarked against Mix FM- 1398 pax, LiteFM -194 pax, Red FM -968 pax in June.
c) Numbers of podcast streamed or downloaded grew by more than 298% compared to the previous year.
Oct 2008 = 813
May 2009 = 8208
May 2010 = 24497
d) Website Unique Visitors grew by more than 142 % compared to the previous year.
Oct 2008 : 965
May 2009 : 11,015
May 2010 : 15,658
2. Revenue for 12 months grew by 690% comparing the 12 months preceding May 2010 vs 12 months preceding May 2009.
Range for revenue for 12 months to May 2009 : Six figures
Range for revenue for 12 months May 2010: Seven figures
3. The spot on creative campaign and effective media planning ensured that we successfully recruited the affluent business and professional community.
- 36% of BFM’s listeners earn between RM 2500 to RM 5000, while another 43% earn more than RM5000 monthly.
- 17% of BFM’s listeners have a household income of RM 2500 to RM 5000 , while another 72% have a household income of RM5000 and above.
- 33% have investments worth more than RM100K.
- 51% are influential in their corporate purchase decision.
- 21.1% are business owners while another 25.6% are in marketing, finance or economics industry.
- Recognizing the creativity of the campaign, National Carrier MAS commenced a radio advertising campaign and contest in July 2009 that associated interpretations of the letters BFM with travel and MAS.
- MPH Bookstores co-opted the BFM acronym by decking out “Bored? Free Mind” on prominent spots in their bookstores
- Axle Racing co-opted BFM to be their media partners, with BFM’s signature Black & White phrases that made up the acronym BFM prominent on the race cars.
- Tony Fernandes :” I have to say that I didn’t know what to expect coming in here, but you run a very professional shop, your questions were fantastic, you did grill me, I did enjoy it.I do want to read the news on air one day! Congratulations, I love seeing innovation. I love seeing the fact that in these times, someone out there is building this.”
- Ahmad Izham Omar - Media Prima - "I survived the Breakfast Grille
- Actor , Entreprenuer and once prominent DJ known for his cynicism Patrick Teoh posted on his Facebook :” BFM- The only station I listen to”
- Feedback from website by listener Candy Tay :” I was starting to give up on Malaysian radio stations when a "Bribe-Free Malaysian" bumper sticker caught my eye during the morning rush. Finally a radio station that doesnt talk about shallow, mindless teenage crap! Good job BFM.”
Now, BFM is really Breaking FM Monopoly
(Source- All the above information are provided by BFM)
Anything else going on that might have helped drive results?
BFM’s content delivery, especially its no holds barred interview segments with business leaders e.g. Tony Fernandez & Idris Jala and its “intelligent” music selection has no doubt established a reputation among its listeners that has further generated loyalty and Word-Of-Mouth. The contribution of the BFM “product delivery” to the brand’s growth cannot be discounted.
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