#MARKiesAwards MY 2021 highlight: Yellow Leads works to relaunch 80 year old Ho Yan Hor

Agency Yellow Leads took home the bronze award under the branding agency of the year category at A+M’s Agency of the Year Malaysia 2021 awards. It also won bronze for the Most creative – Launch/Relaunch category for its clients Ho Yan Hor and the campaign Heat-Tea Saviour for the Malaysia edition of MARKies 2021.

Yellow Leads worked with its clients Ho Yan Hor to change the impression of the brand amongst young decision makers taking charge of their families.

Ho Yan Hor has been perceived as the traditional remedy of families for the past 80 years. However, with the younger generations holding more responsibility in the family, Ho Yan Hor knew that it needed to rebuilt its affinity with this rising target audience.

Challenge

As new decision makers entered the scene, and made decisions for the whole family, traditional remedy brand Ho Yan Hor saw the need to convince the young new decision makers to give a heritage brand a chance. It also needed to modernise its appeal and redefine its brand in a direction that would parallel the new audiences tastes.

The brand required a relaunch and the Yellow Leads team was tapped on to help with the process. The agency knew it needed to understand how this Chinese Malaysian target audience deals with “Yit Hei” (body heatiness). The agency followed this segment’s consumer behavioural shifts and discovered that unfortunately, Ho Yan Hor was not top-of-mind among young audiences as there are so many solutions for health.

Strategy

Yellow Leads identified that the target audience, deemed as Urban Warriors are urban Millennial who play multiple roles in life to survive the obstacles of their hectic urban lifestyles. Their constant daily hustle does not provide optimal conditions for their body, exposing them to sickness.  They were seen as Urban Warriors, who were fighting for their goals in the rat race of life, and needed a “saviour” – a space Ho Yan Hor could then occupy.

While other market players used a quick-healing message, Ho Yan Hor stood out with an alternative solution – a prevention of sickness, through life-balancing techniques.  

For the relaunch, the brand was refreshed with an image, an identity to catch the attention of its young target market and give those who knew Ho Yan Hor a new perspective. Leveraging on Ho Yan Hor’s 80 years of legacy, “Master Ho”, the herb expert was born.

Master Ho would be the brand’s new unique persona and the people’s “Heat-Tea Saviour”.

To effectively relaunch Ho Yan Hor with its new message and image, the agency strategised “Heat-Tea Savior” campaign to follow a 4C communication strategy: Catch, Connect to Close, and Continue.

Firstly, they wanted to catch the audience’s attention by creating awareness and noise, then connect to close the gap between the brand and consumers by creating resonance through brand experience, and lastly, continue to educate and sustain the chatter about Ho Yan Hor with engaging content.

Execution

With the 4Cs in mind, the campaign was executed with video content and posts on Facebook and Instagram as well as Youtube ads from October 2020 to March 2021. This was followed by scenario-based content, product promotional content, and a video guide content to facilitate the “connect to close” phase, and to “continue” to educate and sustain the buzz, KOL and partnership content were released throughout the entire campaign duration.

On top of that, the campaign’s contents also supported the relaunch of Ho Yan Hor ready-to-drink canned teas with new Sour Plum flavour. To address all campaign objectives for a successful relaunch, this “Heat-Tea Saviour” campaign covered four overall content pillars: branding, educational, lifestyle, and product.

To reposition Ho Yan Hor, the character of Master Ho, the brand’s new and hip persona, was created to give people a fresh perspective, attraction and a new way to engage with them.

Master Ho, the herb expert, would share, simplify and relate to people on how to prevent heatiness in their daily lives.  For greater recall rate, Master Ho even rapped about the grime of daily life uplifted by the right Ho Yan Hor products and their specifications. The brand needed to also create resonance with urban Millennials on their hectic lifestyles and provide a solution to “heatiness” that would put a pause on plans. With the infusion of value-adding tips and life advice, Ho Yan Hor wanted to connect with the audience via their platform as a personality and be more than just a brand page.

While competitors were selling a “sickness and cure” message, the brand strategised its content based on a message that was highly relatable to the audience. It focused on selling a “prevention” method against the effects of bad life habits so that urban Millennials wouldn’t have to worry about being bogged down by sickness if they had Ho Yan Hor by their side. With that, content educating on product ingredients and benefits were prepared to solution urban Millennials’ issues

In order to enter the mind of Millennials and in conjunction with the great hype from “The Rap of China” show in 2020, it only made sense that Master Ho became Malaysia’s first medicinal-herb rap star.  Master Ho's “Heat-Tea Saviour” music video introduced Ho Yan Hor’s teas as saviours to a series of individuals in ‘heaty’ and ‘sticky’ scenarios. This catchy and modern track helped the brand cut through the noise of everyday medicinal ads and ads, in general, to stick to the brain of our target market.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=825227594972823&ref=sharing 

Result

After the relaunch of Ho Yan Hor, public recognition of the brand increased significantly and awareness of its latest product, the ready-to-drink canned tea in newly launched Sour Plum flavour, spiked. Multiple organic enquiries came in on the products featured in the campaign series.

Overall sales on the eCommerce side also observed a significant increase. In addition, distributors noticed the reaction from the ads and became interested, initiating to list Ho Yan Hor products in their retail chain – one of them being 99 Speedmart, one of Malaysia’s top performing mini-market chain outlets.

The campaign’s catchy rap further enhanced the relaunch impact proving a high recall rate amongst the Malaysian market. In a span of 5 months, Ho Yan Hor has been transformed from an ageing 80-year-old medicinal-herb brand into a rockstar rap herb guru – one that millennials can relate to and are attracted to follow – to the shock and delight of its former as well as newly reached audience, who have noticed and shifted their perceptions on health and prevention of “heatiness” for their continued well-being with Ho Yan Hor.

The campaign reached over nine million people and led to over 246% growth in sales.