#MarketingEventsAwards 2020 highlight: Ahem Ideas lights up the hearts of Malaysians with LAMPU 2019

The Lights and Motion Putrajaya (LAMPU) is Malaysia's biggest annual lights festival. Running for six consecutive years, this grand projection mapping event has one of the highest turnout rates that attracts visitors both local and international.

As a member of LUCI (Lighting Urban Community International), LAMPU is featured alongside other international light festivals around the world and is marked on the international calendar of light festivals.

When a brief was sent to numerous agencies to conceptualise a winning theme for LAMPU 2019, the team at Ahem Ideas decided to push the bar by coming up with a theme that would capture the hearts of the visitors attending the event. The event also won over our judges and Ahem Ideas walked home with a bronze for Best creative element for an event at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE’s Marketing Events Awards 2020.

Challenge

The storyboard for LAMPU needed to be experienced not only as a projection mapping show, but also as a touch and feel experience.

Key objective:

• To capture the hearts of visitors, especially Malaysians by celebrating its diversity and rich offering in culture and tradition
• To create content and activities that were not just memorable but also experiential
• To highlight the ethnic and cultural diversity of Malaysia and Malaysians

Strategy

The theme was set as “Beautiful Malaysia”. Malaysia being a melting pot of culture and traditions, there is much to celebrate and share. Beautiful Malaysia was created to reflect Malaysia’s history, traditions, celebrations, food and our prosperity. The team also wanted to celebrate where the nation was going.

The Interactive DOME that was conceptualised as a side activity for the public to experience the various activity booths that saw the place come to life at sunset with the key focal point being on the “Palace of Justice”.

The aim was to create content that celebrated Malaysia and her people in a unique showcase of light and colour. The content needed to be different, not in its usual abstract patterns and design as was done in the previous years.

The team wanted to also touch on the emotions of Malaysians and give visitors a full 360 view of what Malaysia is, and what the future holds.

Execution

A story board was created which started with the diverse children of Malaysia and the images then transitions through a series of animations and elements, walking consumers through the various key historical moments, and  highlights and aspirations for the future.

Pushing the bar a little bit higher, the team also wanted to include local talents from Universities and colleges in Malaysia.

Taking a lead from a competition among projection mapping designers in Japan, Ahem decided to provide an opportunity to young talents and approached a couple of design schools to gauge their interest in contributing their version of Beautiful Malaysia for LAMPU 2019. The idea was met with an overwhelming response. Hence, a competition was held among design students from design schools throughout Malaysia.

In order to make the theme relatable and experienced during the entire festival, the concept of Beautiful Malaysia was also applied in creating experiential experiences at LAMPU 2019 through the Interactive Cultural Dome and the Hello 2020! Messaging Booth.

The interactive dome or better known as the Cultural Dome, showcased interactive content of our country’s multicultural traditions and celebrations.  There were two halves of the Cultural Dome, where one half featured many festivals celebrated while the other half showcased modern Malaysia, with its skyscrapers and modern transportation. The public was able to participate in the various interactive activities such as a Hari Raya Sing Along, artificial reality (AR) colour scan projection mapping where children could chose a picture to colour and have it scanned to be added to the wall.

In the spirit of the festivities and as an added experience for the public, Ahem and the LAMPU organisers wanted to give the public the opportunity to express and share their greetings with family and friends- something to remember the experience and event by. A messaging booth was created to give the public this opportunity, and hence the “Hello 2020!” interactive messaging booth was born, at the eleventh hour.

Fully conceptualised, produced and executed by Ahem Ideas with the support of a 100% local in-house production team, the entire project was created and completed within the span of eight weeks.

The main content for the event used a grand projection mapping to a story through pictures. The story started with a group of children from a diverse of background looking out a window, happy and laughing. These children then merged and the image transformed to a mousedeer (Sang Kancil), an icon of Malaysia. Sang Kancil then ran through the woods and travelled through time. The images then transitioned to feature key milestones in Malaysia's history from the arrival of the Portuguese, to the Japanese and the forming of the Malayan Union at the end of WWII. After that, the story took audience to the highlight of Malaysia, the declaration of Independence in 1957 followed by its very first car and the start of Malaysia’s road to development and progress.

Content creation took into account the structural design of the building, with its many pillars, windows and dome. To ensure the visuals seem blended and seamless, the team had to ensure precise measurements. Due to security issues, the team was unable to procure a blueprint of the building, thus its designers had to sketch the entire façade of the building with measurements manually taken. They then incorporated the measurements into the final design output.

Results

Despite the many challenges faced with timing, weather and budget limitations, the entire event started off without a hitch and was a huge success. Garnering over 200,000 visitors on the first day alone, it was reported that the festival had attracted a total of 1.2 million visitors in total over the span of four days.

Receiving wide media coverage from both the local and international mainstream and digital media, #Lampu2019 was also retweeted and shared among the many social media users. The Vocket (an online news portal in Bahasa Malaysia) reported that visitors were not only impressed by the uniqueness of the visuals but many were also touched by the story and that it had further reinforced their sense of national pride.

There was also a sense of pride among many of the social media users, many were left impressed and proud of the quality produced by a fully local team that was to many on par with the other international mapping events. The event also was featured on the New Year Print of The News Straits Times.

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