Becoming a game changer: How great ideas can come to life

This post is sponsored by Fabulous Indonesia.

The COVID-19 pandemic has unquestionably presented an era-defining challenge to the marketing industry. So, as marketers, we are being challenged to think about building brands during these pandemic years, and beyond. The question is: How is marketing being redefined, and what can we do to help brands grow faster?

To be a game changer is to be innovative, to be out of step with the rest of the crowd. What’s new about change isn’t that it’s occurring, but the speed at which brands are both expected to anticipate and be able to react to it.

Being a game changer is all about delivering a great experience for your customers. While experiences are based on a wide spectrum of feelings, the outcome of these feelings, and the overall experience, will be the benchmark for an organisation’s success.

Here are several concepts to remember as you set out to change the game, and bring great ideas to life.

Agile and adaptive strategic thinking

To deliver exceptional customer experiences throughout a whirlwind of change, marketers need to have an intelligent strategy to survive. Agile innovation and adaptive marketing strategies in the midst of a pandemic are a must to maintain the pace of business. The focus must be on intelligent services that provide continuous, customer-centric innovations.

Taking DANCOW SIAP SEKOLAH (DSS), as an example, an educational platform to help mums nurture children to be school-ready, we were able to switch the programme from on-ground to a digital channel utilising WhatsApp. It successfully reached more than 350,000 mums all over Indonesia within a year.

Richer content and excellent execution

Many consumers today are looking to be brand advocates, and this can only be accomplished by creating an immersive experience. Through richer content, positive interactions, interactive campaigns, and excellent executions, you can become memorable and highly relevant to your target audience.

Ideas can be overwhelming. The bigger the effort to turn an idea into reality, the more daunting the task. A successful idea is all about an excellent execution.

As community officers encountered so many challenges during COVID-19, BTPN Syariah conducted the Tangguh Bersama Tumbuh Bersama programme series, which aimed to boost employees’ spirits. This programme engaged 12,000 BTPN Syariah community officers.

Growing capability with growing responsibility

Credibility is essential when a brand is fighting to become a leader in the market. Focusing on expertise, knowledge and the customer experience can drive growth in the digital age, and marketing needs to modernise a specific set of capabilities and mindsets.

FABULOUS INDONESIA was asked to lead MILO ACTIV INDONESIA, a year-round comprehensive campaign that supports active and healthy lifestyles in Indonesian families to help children develop their character through sport, and to cope with COVID-19. Since its launch in 2020, MILO ACTIV Indonesia has attracted more than 7600 participants and generated 58 million impressions.

Never stop creating, never stop innovating

Advanced technology, functionality, or a very different look and feel, can be a powerful differentiator. Newness: finding new ways to perform tasks that are more flexible and convenient than traditional ways may even change the origins of an industry.

When other brands are busy doing virtual events, we’re starting to think outside of the box in formulating COVID-19-safe on-ground events. Collaborating with LACTOGROW, we proudly presented #GROWHAPPY FANTASEA DRIVE-THRU, the first-ever family-friendly drive-through experience in Indonesia.  

With more than 2000 family members, two million impressions on social media, and with zero cases of COVID-19, the government has set FANTASEA as the new standard for COVID-19-safe events.

Approaching the community

Communities combine skills and vision to unite people under a common purpose and mission. Communities can play an important role in driving this change. The benefits of approaching and investing in community building are increased brand attachment and customer satisfaction, which drives product sales.

Striving in the pandemic era, MILO searched for an alternative site to engage the target market. Building a stronger ecosystem in residential areas was the strategy to answer the challenging times when malls and supermarket operations were restricted.

KAMPUNG ACTIV MILO was the solution. It fitted perfectly with the brand’s objective to get closer to the end-user community and fix the proximity that had been decreasing for the past two years because of the pandemic.

Within 26 days, amazing outputs resulted. Not only did it succeed in inviting more than 300 warungs in two areas to join, the programme also exceeded the sales KPIs, where it gained 151% of the given target. And the most important thing was the brand was in touch with thousands of community members who got the message of the importance of an active lifestyle to face the pandemic.

Becoming a game changer means striving to bring new ideas to life; always listening to the market; providing excellent user experiences; generating buzz; and identifying something that may not have been done before which customers will notice.