PROTON names Roslan Abdullah VP of sales and marketing

PROTON has appointed Roslan Abdullah as VP, sales and marketing, as well as CEO of Proton Edar (PESB). PESB is a wholly owned subsidiary of PROTON involved in the distribution of its cars and providing sales and after sales services to customers.

Roslan (pictured) has spent close to three decades in the automotive sector, bringing with him a wealth of experience and knowledge about Malaysia’s automotive landscape. According to his LinkedIn, he was previously the GM of DRB-HICOM Defence Technologies for more than a year. Prior to that, he was president and COO of Honda Malaysia for more than six years. He was also the CFO at Modenas for more than a year. According to PROTON, his appointment will further strengthen the company's team to achieve its long-term goal and objectives.

PROTON's CEO Li Chunrong said it is happy to welcome Roslan to the family and looks forward to his positive contributions to PROTON's performance during this challenging period. A+M has reached out to PROTON for additional information.

The automotive brand recently unveiled its first digital car launch campaign in partnership with GrowthOps Malaysia. The campaign was initially planned to be part of PROTON’s big launch and 360-launch marketing strategy for X70 2020, but has since been converted to a digital once amidst COVID-19 and MCO.

This virtual campaign includes a live-stream car launch on YouTube and Facebook, voice-activated web page to champion PROTON’s voice command feature “Hi PROTON”, direct-to-manufacturer online booking portal with bank integration, and QR-enabled print ads to drive traffic to the website. GrowthOps which is responsible for PROTON's creative, digital and website marketing, took the lead for this campaign, working together with PROTON's marketing team and partner agencies including essence-BCW and m/SIX for the campaign.  

The campaign garnered 4.9 million impressions, 190,000 visits, 142,000 live viewers during the digital launch day and 6000 bookings within 17 days.

In a statement to A+M, Hasbidin Hassan, senior account director, GrowthOps said that the initial campaign was supposed to be a 360 campaign with a physical launch at a convention centre. He add that the creative concept revolved around “Intelligent made for you" and had an expected ROI of about 4000 bookings.

“Challenges included securing bookings without an on-ground event, which was hard to do as people did not get the opportunity to interact with the car”, Hassan continued, mentioning that this campaign “really was an achievement for every stakeholder working on this project. To get these results in an uncertain time, was an uphill battle, but one that we are proud of”.