By James Pong

Let’s admit it - for the past six months, DiGi Telecommunications has been pumping lots of advertising money for its brand. Therefore, it’s the perfect example I’m going to use to describe steps of branding. DiGi is one of the mobile service providers in Malaysia that spans out to other Asia Pacific countries.

Branding is useful as long as you have a good product. You don’t have to have the best product as good branding and marketing helps to make a good product looks perfect. Therefore, branding is vital.

Step 1: Find an Ad Agency / Outsource for Creative Talents

Let’s face it, nearly all the big companies that stack up Fortune 500 list use external party like an ad agency to do the dirty work for them. Outsourcing is smart and the brilliant way to do it. After all, they have the most experienced and creative people that do advertising for a living.

DiGi employed Naga DBB to enhance its brand. Not only Naga DBB came out with just another advertising campaign, but it ended up creating a mascot and a theme song from Ricky Nelson called ‘I Will Follow You’.

Step 2: Brand Building

Even though, the creative / ad agency will be doing all the thinkings, it is always good to work side by side to build a successful branding campaign.

The essential elements will include more or less the followings:

Mascot. A mascot not only enhance the brand itself, but it’s part of the brand that people actually remembers well especially when your mascot is a slightly overweight man in yellow spandex suit! Naga DBB came up with this brilliant idea of having a man in yellow spandex suit following every users of DiGi. In other words, the yellow man actually represents DiGi’s line.

Theme song. A theme song can be produced from scratch or taken from a musician (provided the copyright is purchased). With the idea of a Yellow Man mascot following every DiGi users, the next thing most people would think would be a song about “following” (or rather stalking) someone. And voila, Ricky Nelson’s ‘I Will Follow You’. Alternatively, one can use a jingle (i.e. Nokia) or a voice slogan (i.e. It’s a Sony) instead of a theme song.

Slogan / Catchphrase. A slogan or a catchphrase if uses the right wordings can actually be catchy and make people remembers. After all, a successful brand needs people to remember the brand. In this part, DiGi’s slogan is “Always the smarter choice”. However, it is the catchphrase that’s widely used - “Fu-Yoh!^TM” “Fu-Yoh!^TM” is an expression of surprise and even though it is said to be originated from Hokkien dialect, it is somewhat a Malaysian thing and it’s catchy! DiGi even got “Fu-Yoh!^TM” trademarked! You can always use “Fui-yoh!” or “Fui-yo!” for your brand because they aren’t trademarked yet. But, that would means you’re not creative and creativity / originality does count.

Step 3: Advertising Campaign

Of course, after the initial brand building, the next step is the ad campaign. From TVC to Radio ad, to Print ad and the World Wide Web. The more the better. And while at that, it is important to incorporate all the elements, i.e. the mascot, theme song, slogan/catchphrase in the advertising campaign/s.

One of the DiGi’s most popular TVC below:

View DiGi’s other TVC here

Step 4 & 5: Promotion, Giveaways, Contests

While advertising like TVC is important, the follow-up is as essential. Promotion, giveaways and contests tend to not only build brand loyalty but it is the best way to draw or attract new customers!

Concerts. In this section, while one part of DiGi’s marketing plan is kept up in the price war campaign with its rival, the other half of DiGi’s marketing plan is to conduct external activities that’s partially non-related to DiGi itself, because after all, it’s part of their “Brand Building” campaign. DiGi got smarter by co-organizing “Good Charlotte” concert with MTVAsia last May. In this particular concert, there was no tickets sold (except those black market tickets at eBay) and only DiGi customers and MTVAsia contest winners are eligible to go to this concert, therefore many non-DiGi users were forced to subscribe to DiGi as the last resort for Good Charlotte concert tickets! Even though this method is quite monopolizing, hey, who cares? Good Charlotte only stopped at Kuala Lumpur in the South East Asia region and not Bangkok nor Singapore. So, nobody’s complaining.

Besides Good Charlotte concert, DiGi also targeted other market, primarily Chinese market by organizing concerts like “DiGi-988 A Party” (to be held on 21 July 2007 at 7pm in Outdoor Carpark of the Bukit Jalil National Stadium) where Daniel Lee, Gary Chaw, Ee Je Chi, Joey Yung, Nicholas Teo, Victor Wong, Yumiko and many more will perform in this party. And once again, this concert is only for DiGi customers (and 988 station listeners).

Contests. What about contests? Besides the smaller contests DiGi held in its web site, DiGi is now giving away 50 cars in 50 days! The prerequisite is you must be a DiGi Prepaid customer and reload a minimum of 50 bucks. Once again, this is brand loyalty building for existing customers and a great way to attract new ones. Even better, the person who wins the car will always remember who gave him the car, after all it’s all painted in yellow - DiGi’s color!

So, there you go, the five-steps to successful brand-building campaign. Always remember, “What you take, you must give back!” (The others is Corporate Social Responsibility). That’s why they’re giving away 50 cars. Not really. But, guess who is also giving away another 50 cars? Petronas! And you just need to spend 20 bucks to qualify.

Now, if you are building up your brand, don’t forget to give away 50 cars. Fu-Yoh!^TM Haha.

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