Kuala Lumpur, 10th July 2021 – Fishermen Integrated wins 3 golds and 1 silver at the Appies 2021, despite the pandemic!
The APPIES Malaysia is an annual event that presents a rare opportunity for advertising, digital and marketing agencies or brands to present their best campaigns of the year to the industry. While 2020 was one of the most difficult years in the history of new age advertising, the APPIES saw an astounding amount of exceptional work, which clearly proved that a pandemic did not stand in the way of creativity.
“The pandemic truly changed the landscape of advertising. We needed something that was not only bold, but one that would engage with the audience, spark conversations and become the talk of town. That’s when we decided to re-think, re-strategise and re-work the way we did things at Fishermen Integrated, and thankfully it worked for us!” said Mark Darren Lee, the Managing Director of Fishermen Integrated.
Fortunately, Fishermen’s decision to be unconventional and bold worked out to their benefit. They took home the biggest win of the night with the most golds awarded to an agency, with 3 golds and 1 silver through campaigns done with their long standing clients, Nando’s, Pizza Hut and Grab.
Nando’s emerged as the champion of the night bagging 2 gold awards for their campaign “Re-celebrate 2020”.
When the pandemic hit in the early 2020, Malaysians were left stuck at home and missing out on many big festive occasions and milestones. Being distant from family and friends and unable to dine together brought the people’s spirits down and Nando’s wasn’t having it.
So when the lockdown eased towards the final quarter of 2020, Nando’s grabbed the opportunity to call on Malaysians to re-celebrate the missed festivities with their campaign “Re-celebrating 2020!”.
The campaign quickly caught the attention of Malaysians everywhere, curious to find out if Nando’s had made a mistake when they wished everyone Selamat Hari Raya and Happy Chinese New Year in September. This confusion caused a whole lot of buzz on social media, getting the attention of other brands that teased them at the timing of their post and that made them the talk of the town.
Nando’s – Re-Celebrate 2020 Viral Raya Post 
Nando’s – Re-Celebrate Viral CNY Post
When Nando’s finally revealed the reason behind the greetings, they had already achieved their target of raising the spirits in all Malaysians despite the gloominess of the pandemic and proceeded to share rewards with them in order to “Re-celebrate 2020” joyfully. Nando’s also engaged with all the brands that interacted with them, and truly did “Re-celebrated 2020” together.
The campaign topped Malaysia’s Twitter trending charts in just 2 days, and reached exceptional increase in brand mentions, sales, and total reach. While the campaign sparked loads of love and laughs, “Re-celebrate 2020” ultimately showed Malaysians that despite the situation, there was still a glimmer of hope, and it wasn’t too late to make it a good year!
“We are very happy for “Re-celebrate 2020” to receive the recognition from Appies. This is an especially meaningful campaign to us as the campaign was first and foremost, developed with our customers in mind. It was not an initiative to simply drive sales or create brand buzz but ultimately about spreading positivity when we were all hit hard by an unfamiliar challenge brought upon by the pandemic. We really wanted to create something that could re-energize our customers and we knew that “Re-celebrate 2020” had done exactly that when we saw the responses from our customers, the media as well as other brands. We are grateful for what the team has put into creating this campaign, which is 100% built based on consumer insights, fits the brand personality and our goals”, said Elaine Chiew, Senior Marketing Manager of Nando’s Malaysia
While Nando’s made a huge impact on the moods of netizens in the final quarter of the year, Pizza Hut won a gold at the Appies and the hearts of Malaysians with their campaign Pizza Heart starring Jiwang Jeff during Valentines Day.
Jiwang Jeff became the Aunt Agony of the 21st century and garnered the attention of everyone in a love dilemma, everywhere. He gave them personalised solutions to their problems and warmed their hearts with Pizza Hearts.
To spice up the campaign even further, Pizza Hut decided to spread love even to its competitors with cheeky messages that caught massive attention on all social media platforms. The campaign was a huge success and saw not only visibility and sales shoot up, but proved that all Malaysia needed at that time was to give love and spread love with Pizza Hearts!
“This award serves as a reminder for us, that whenever you are in doubt, believe in yourself, believe in your team, and believe in the agency to know what’s good for us to engage and inspire our customers. The key is to be brave, confident and just make it work!” said Quennie Tan, Senior Marketing Manager Brand Comms & Innovation of Pizza Hut.
Quennie Tan, Senor Marketing Manager, Pizza Hut
Evidently, Fishermen chose to warm the hearts of Malaysians at a very difficult time and kept the Malaysian-ness in all their campaigns allowing the people to truly resonate with them, including Grab’s campaign “Huatever you want, Grab got!” that won a silver at the Appies.
Grab, started their campaign with a problem. Malaysians commonly saw them as a ride-hailing app but they needed to change this perspective to “your everyday, everything app”! So they ran their campaign at possibly the busiest time of the year, which is Chinese New Year, when there’s just so much to do and not enough time.
Incorporating the very Malaysian term “Tai-chi” (which means to pass your responsibility to others), Grab released a film that showed an adorable boy having to carry out all the responsibilities of his siblings for Chinese New Year. He then learns the art of Tai-chi-ing it to Grab and the campaign immediately caught the attention of netizens who were also looking for help to clean their house, shop for groceries, look for the most unusual yee sang and many more.
The campaign which brought a great pool of Key Opinion Leaders and the largest number of vendors providing unique choices of yee sang to spice up the festivities did not just solve problems for netizens, but it made them the “go-to” app for the season, which consequently changed the perspective of Malaysians about Grab.
“The past year and a half has been very unpredictable and extremely challenging. So having 3 different clients secure wins at the Appies (Pizza Hut, Nando’s & Grab) during the pandemic, has brought us so much joy and it reassures us that we’re on the right track to bridging our clients’ wants to their consumers’ needs. Winning the 3 Golds and 1 Silver at the Appies this year has indeed boosted the morale of the team and serves as an inspiration to keep churning exceptional campaigns in the future. We are blessed to have a wonderful team of young and talented people who have been giving their all and striving to produce only the best for all our clients, despite the current pandemic situation“, said Joyce Gan, the Group Brand Director of Fishermen Integrated.
Fishermen Integrated burst into the Malaysian advertising scene in 2014, and has since continued to push their creative boundaries in the Digital Advertising world.
