5 firms that truly get what PR-led integrated comms means

According to the Public Relations Global Market Report 2021 by The Business Research Company, the global PR market is expected to reach US$129.35 billion in 2025 at a compound annual growth rate of 7.4%. In the same report, the research company, which has worked with brands such as Amazon, Sony, Sanofi, Panasonic and more, said that the growth of the PR market is driven by the rising need for brands to gain a competitive advantage.

PR efforts today can no longer be directed to one and must extend to different stakeholders from communities to boardrooms and direct and peripheral influencers, to present a more humane and holistic side. This has led to a slew of multipronged PR campaigns with combinations of varying marketing strategies that target different stakeholders and mediums, as brands strived to one-up each other, and communicate their messages to their audiences effectively. 

To sieve out brands and agencies that truly aced the PR communications game, leaving tangible and lasting impacts on the community, the team at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE turned to our PR Awards 2022 results, judged by a panel of top PR professionals in the industry. These were the top five brands that won the PR-led integrated communications race with their comprehensive and creative campaigns, listed in alphabetical order. 

AIA Singapore 

Retirement planning is typically overlooked and underestimated. As a market leader in the insurance industry, AIA knew that it was the brand's responsibility to address this issue of retirement - encouraging the nation to consider and act on their retirement planning, while living up to its brand promise of enabling healthier, longer, better lives, and uplift its business. Delving deeper into the matter through its research in 2021, AIA decided that it would speak to young parents to help them plan for their and their children's future.

Working with Ogilvy Singapore, AIA pursued an integrated approach to bring its campaign "What will your retirement look like when your children grow up?" live. The brand first banked on emotions to capture audiences' attention, then logic to drive them to find out more. To round up the initiative, it gave parents simple and accessible steps to start taking actions with AIA to plan for their retirement.

For the first stage, AIA rolled out a short video titled "The Pianist", which featured the story of a loving father coming to terms with his own future after dedicating his life to supporting his daughter's dreams of being a top pianist.  To date, "The Pianist" has generated more than 2.2 million views across TV, radio, online and OOH mediums. Moreover, the emotive, compelling story ignited conversations for agents to speak with prospects.

Building on the attention garnered from "The Pianist", AIA moved onto its next stage of getting its audience to "lean in and find out more". It released findings from its studies which revealed that parents were spending 2.5 times more on their children's needs than their own retirement, which became a major talking point on both social media and in real life. Altogether, it secured more than 150 pieces of coverage within the first three months of its campaign. Additionally, recognising that social media was an essential component in young parents' lives and the power of nano-influencers, AIA leveraged this insight to launch "AIAFluencer", where agents became its social media influencers, actively educating and engaging with prospects. The brand also kept conversations going by rolling out an ST panel discussion, social media content, as well as partnering with influencers and online publications such as Rice Media. 

AIA then delved into its final stage, including a call-to-action in its communications. For instance, parents could find out their preparedness for retirement with a digital retirement calculator, and get in touch with an AIA agent for advice. The brand equipped its agents with the retirement calculator and Retirement Quotient tool to create personalised analyses for prospects.  According to the brand, its combination of powerful storytelling, data, and a strong call-to-action ensured great results where around 21% of people who came across its communications visited AIA's website or branches as a result of the campaign. As for the consideration for AIA as the partner of choice for retirement planning, AIA saw a jump to 32% across the general public. In addition, 40% of its target audience were willing to look into AIA's retirement offerings. 

 Fujifilm

Fujifilm was set to launch its new camera, the GFX100S, which was designed specifically for professional photographers and retailed at almost SG$10,000. Looking to speak to its target audience, the camera brand tasked PR and brand agency CampaignLab with developing a fully integrated campaign that would appeal to luxury-loving consumers and pro-photographers alike, driving mass media and social engagement. The campaign had three main objectives - driving the awareness of the GFX100S among Fufijilm's target audiences, maximising coverage in both luxury lifestyle media and photography press, and ensuring messaging around the camera's KSP got cut-through. 

This led to the birth of the GFX Suite, a hotel room equipped with the full GFX range and accompanying lenses. Guests who stayed in the GFX suite enjoyed a range of privileges, such as access to a range of Fujifilm photography experts, in-room interactive video tutorials to help them capture their best moments, and post-stay photography concierge service to edit images taken during the stay. Additionally, they could use GFX branded bathrobes and slippers during their stay, and receive a luxury printed photobook of their best images 24 hours after their stay. 

On the marketing and media side, the brand hoped to maximise buzz across media by rolling out a comprehensive media strategy. It first kicked off the campaign by inviting Shaun White from Sunrise to the suite to experiment with the camera. Following that, it reached out to luxury titles such as Vogue, Signature Luxury Travel, Escape, Man of Many, AFR Life and Leisure, 9Honey and more to arrange exclusive stays for these brands at the GFX Suite.

This provided the perfect platform to launch a fully integrated campaign. The campaign included four aspects - media relations which tailored pitches to different verticals and research releases, and content marketing which developed imagery and travel themed promo videos to be used across channels. The last two aspects were organic social content shared featuring #shoton images, in which media guests and influencers shared numerous snaps due to the backdrop, as well as partnerships with luxury hotel Park Hyatt for extended reach to a premium, luxury-loving target audience. 

At the end of the campaign, the GFX Suite earned media reach of more than 40,000,000 with coverage across TV, national news and other publications, as well as a social reach of over 53,000 people. On the business side, Fujifilm saw "an unprecedented demand for this project", evident from the huge increase in unique users to the booking microsite.

GoTo

In Indonesia, the COVID-19 pandemic caused immense disruption to MSMEs that formed the backbone of the Indonesian economy. Moreover, digitalisation had also led to greater competition for MSMEs as they competed with larger global brands armed with significant resources. With these challenges in mind, GoTo realised the pressing need to support the recovery of Indonesian MSMEs for the Indonesian economy to recover. It identified local cities as its starting point for the campaign, seeking to show MSMEs, consumers and driver partners how a mutually beneficial relationship could be created. 

As such, the brand formulated a cohesive strategy and framework around CR, which focused on developing sustainable impact beyond one-off initiatives. Titled "Bangkit Bersama (Rise Together)", its integrated communications approach had three key objectives - engaging local stakeholders such as the government, customers and MSMEs to take part in the movement, creating a tailored event experience in each city to engage its target audiences, and lastly generating conversations around GoTo's commitment to empowering MSMEs. 

Prior to the campaign's official launch, the brand built awareness by arranging City Experience tours in Surakarta and Surabaya. National and local KOLs with a large social media presence on MSME empowerment were invited, such as Podcast Ancur, Adit Insomnia, and Kemal Palevi to visit GoTo’s top local MSME merchants in the city, while introducing them to the #BangkitBersama movement. 

This was followed by the roll-out of the campaign in Surakarta, then Surabaya, East Java, and Indonesia later on. GoTo held a hybrid press conference that highlighted the targeted city's strengths, and how GoTo could digitalise Indonesia's economy through its movement. At the press conference, the main initiatives of "#BangkitBersama" were announced, such as increasing exposure for MSMEs through hyperlocal initiatives and geo-tagging technology, empowering MSME growth to support job creation, prioritising the health and safety of driver partners, and increasing MSMEs' business scale by providing order fulfilment services. In addition, the brand also planned CSR initiatives to contribute back to the community, and city-based initiatives to reach out to the local community such as GoFood promotion program for merchants. For Surabaya in particular, the press conference was targeted at local journalists in the city. 

The brand also supported East java's annual flagship event for MSMEs, and collaborated with the local government to hold various skill development programs for MSMEs, ranging from beginner to advanced level classes.  In order to maintain a steady drumbeat of news and conversations about the campaign, GoTo amplified the narrative in owned channels across all GoTo companies (in-app, social media, blogs), mainstream and social media. It placed OOH advertising in key areas in local cities and continued its collaborations with KOLs. 

According to the brand, the #BangkitBersama campaign received an overwhelmingly positive response from the media, KOLs, local governments and the general public. In particular, its KOL engagement resulted in 88% of mentions on social media having positive to neutral sentiments, with over 370,000 impressions and 10,000 engagements within three days on Instagram and Twitter. 

Havas Media Group 

With constantly evolving measures, the return of Phase 2 (Heightened Alert) in Singapore, and National Day Parade 2021 being postponed, Havas Media Group noticed the frustrations and despair of communities affected by the pandemic. In light of this, the brand sought to help Singaporeans find a sense of normalcy and bring some cheer to them during trying times by establishing a platform that united local communities, artistes, and industries together. 

Riding on the success of the late-night comedy talk show, The Rishi Report Live, Havas teamed up with comedian Rishi Budhrani and his team to launch the "Comedians' Star Charity", a series of six complimentary live shows streamed daily from fourth to ninth August 2021. It planned to use humour as a unifying force, while raising funds for local beneficiaries in the lead-up to National Day. Bringing this concept to life, Havas and Budhrani's team worked together to develop a multipronged campaign which comprised of several aspects - live show production, celebrity and performer appearances, partnerships with stakeholders such as Giving.sg, PR, creative execution of media for the show and fringe publicity, paid media, as well as sponsorships of prizes. 

Prior to the first show, an official press release was sent out to secure coverage from key media channels in Singapore. In addition to running the publicity on its own pages, the brand lobbied all parties involved to shout out the series of six live shows. A personalised asset pack was also created and shared with celebrity guests, performers, and beneficiaries for use. 

On the media side, the brand capitalised on social media by streaming its six live shows every night at 9pm on Rishi's Facebook page and YouTube channel. In particular, the series finale was held on Singapore's National Day in 2021. According to the brand, the two platforms were identified for their ability to reach the masses, and for ease of streaming that enabled viewers to watch the shows for free. As for the content of the shows, they were centred around light-hearted conversations and performances between Rishi, local celebrity personalities such as Gurmit Singh, Benjamin Kheng and Yung Raja, as well as other performers.

The "Comedians' Star Charity" had an added charity element to it, aligned to 2021's NFP theme, "Together, Our Singapore Spirit". By encouraging audiences to make donations via Giving.sg during the show, where they could find out more about each nominated beneficiary, the brand aimed to give back to the local community - nine local beneficiaries of the celebrity guests' choice,  with the funds raised. Some of the local beneficiaries included Singapore Heart Foundation, Migrant Workers' Assistance Fund, Club Rainbow, AWARE, and more. On Havas' end, it managed the fundraising campaigns on Giving.sg by identifying the format of fundraising and a list of beneficiaries. It also coordinated with celebrities to nominate their beneficiary of choice, as well as beneficiaries themselves for approvals to run the fundraising campaigns. 

In the one-week turnaround, the shows managed to achieve the brand's fundamental mission – making a meaningful difference to our local communities during this difficult time and injecting some cheer into the lives of Singaporeans during the National Day period. Close to SG$30,000 was raised for the nominated beneficiaries via the fundraising campaigns on Giving.sg, and partners such as Domino's Pizza and Far East Hospitality came on board with the sponsorship of prizes. According to the brand, it even had winners who chose to donate their prizes to the beneficiaries instead. 

Shopee

Shopee faced three emerging challenges that posed a risk to its business - the pandemic which hit local businesses, the lack of deeper consumer engagement which was limited to interaction on social media and in-app, as well as the need to provide economic opportunities for sellers by inspiring local businesses to engage in eCommerce. These gave rise to three key objectives - to prove that Shopee was a positive force in the local community, increase the visibility of local sellers and encourage consumers to shop from local businesses, and lastly push for meaningful spending amidst cluttered sale seasons.   

To achieve these aims, Shopee launched the "Shopee Celebrates Local" across Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines, which was conceptualised and led by the PR team. As the campaign focused on helping consumers discover, experience, and purchase local products, it became a key component of each market's ongoing "support local" programs, raising visibility for local sellers. Additionally, the brand also designed and introduced a campaign logo (pictured above), which uses the imagery of a pin drop and house to strengthen the branding of the campaign. 

As part of the campaign, Shopee launched an exclusive "Shopee Celebrates Local" microsite within its app which contains a range of features such as competition mechanics and seller selection criteria, seller profiles and stories, and seller shops with curated vouchers. On the media side, the brand announced the launched of the campaign as pre-hype in the lead up to the 12.12 mega campaign and asked users to share their favourite sellers if they were not featured. Additionally, Shopee leveraged on Facebook, Instagram, PR and other forms of media, as well as in-app to drive engagement. For instance, it made use of its app to increase spotlight on "Shopee Celebrates Local" to encourage users to vote for their favourite sellers, before posting short video stories on Shopee Feed to drive shoppers dirtectly to local sellers' store in-app. The brand then delved into Facebook and Instagram, where it featured seller stories and behind-the-scene videos of them respectively to encourage users to engage on their favourite sellers' posts and vote through an in-app link. 

To ensure long-term engagement, or what Shopee coined as "Celebrate", it continued to make use of the same platforms such as Shopee Live to feature winning sellers' interviews and store products with exclusive discounts, and Facebook and Instagram to spotlight winning seller livestreams on Shopee Live and share a recap of the contest. The brand also created a personalised in-app quiz for shoppers, which includes information on the extent to which shoppers have explored and support local products, in order to raise greater awareness of the impact they have made in contributing to local businesses. As for the sellers themselves, participating sellers received incentives such as credits and store vouchers to further support their business growth. 

The campaign achieved positive results, not only creating tangible economic opportunities for the sellers involved but also enabling Shopee to further connect users and local sellers, reinforcing its brand purpose. In just three weeks, 66 sellers were featured across the region to be part of the voting contest. In fact, at its 12.12 sale, 9 in 10 shoppers shopped from local sellers. The campaign was also successful in setting the foundation for long-term awareness and engagement, as there were over 850,000 impressions on "Shopee Celebrates Local" content on social media. More importantly, more awareness was created for the need to support local sellers, evident from the 1.2 million visits on the contest microsite.

Photo courtesy: 123RF

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