Tiger Beer MY satiates cravings by rolling out immersive virtual street food festival

Tiger Beer has transformed its annual street food festival to a fully-immersive, 3D online festival in Malaysia. For Tiger Beer, virtual festivals mean more than just livestreamed content as it takes users around the 3D streets in their own customised avatar. Fans are able to visit vendors, interact with others and play games, before ordering street food directly to their door via DeliverEat, the official delivery partner of the Tiger Street Food Virtual Festival, which will run from 6 to 8 November. In addition to games and food, the Tiger Street Food Virtual Festival also features a live performance by Malaysian hip-hop artist Namewee.

Upon customising their custom avatar, consumers can explore Street Food Central to get recommendations on must-try dishes and play games to win rewards.

The two games are hosted by YouTuber Lizz Chloe, also known as Dumpling Soda, and content creator Harvinth Skin. The Tiger Beer Hunt is hosted by Lizz Chloe and gets consumers racing around Street Food Central to collect hidden bottles of Tiger Beer before the timer runs out. Tiger Beer is handing out a promo code of RM5 off any F&B purchase at the festival for the first 100 individuals to score 300 points each day.

Meanwhile, Harvinth Skin is hosting the Tiger Crystal Mountain Climber Challenge, which will test consumers' reflexes. Participants will have to dodge obstacles, snowballs and Yetis while they collect bottles of Tiger Crystal during their race to the top. Likewise, Tiger Beer is also handing out a promo code of RM5 off any F&B purchase to the first 88 individuals who score 300 points each day.

Street Food Central features food from three streets - Kuala Lumpur Street, Selangor Street and Penang Street. Each of the streets will feature an array of vendors based in these localities and those living within a 15km radius of the vendor in Kuala Lumpur, Selangor and Penang can get the food delivered to their doorstep. A total of 88 vendors are participating in this year's event and they will offer a wide selection of famous dishes alongside brand new, limited edition creations infused with Tiger Beer or Tiger Crystal. There are also crossover collaborations with other vendors, such as the Hainanburg, a partnership between Yut Kee and myBurger Lab.

Besides the food, participants can also order Tiger Beer or Tiger Crystal directly from vendors, either as an add-on to their order or as part of a combo meal at a special price. The virtual experience runs on smartphone and laptop and purchases of street food and Tiger Beer will only be made available to those within delivery range in Klang Valley and Penang. The festival is also only available for non-Muslims aged 21 and above. 

In a statement to A+M, Heineken Malaysia's marketing director Pablo Chabot said it chose to work with Harvinth Skin and Lizz Chloe because they harbour values of defying conventions, making things happen and having the bold determination to turn ideas into action.

He added that the virtual street food festival is an integrated marketing campaign with two phases - pre-registration and festival period. While most of the campaign will exist online, with digital ads and different content strategies targeted at different segments aiming to drive registrations, it will also appear on print and point-of-sale materials at off-trade sites to drive offline users online.

"Creating the world’s first anything is never a walk in the park. At many points, we faced challenges that could have brought the whole project to a halt. It’s especially risky creating and developing the whole campaign during such uncertain times," Chabot said.

According to him, the team started planning the campaign in July but there was no telling whether or not things would go back to normal or if the festival would head back to the streets. However, Chabot explained that the team knew the effects of the first MCO were detrimental to plenty local food businesses and made the decision to stay true to the vision of saving its local streetfood.

Recreating elements of the physical experience of a street festival, such as the smell of food and hawker sounds, is no doubt tough and Tiger Beer recognised that. While it was something it could not exactly mimic, Chabot said the team wanted to bring as much as it could to the experience.

"The most important thing, for us, was taste. We ensured that our users would be able to receive and eat authentic street food," he said, and this came about in the 88 vendors which came on board for the festival. Next was sight. While the experience carries a bit of cyberpunk edge to how it looks, it also wanted to bring in visual cues that paid tribute to the familiar sights that consumers would find at Petaling Street, such as the stall designs and street graffiti. According to Chabot, the sounds heard within the streets very closely resemble what consumers would hear at any coffee shop or hawker centre.

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