#MobExAwards highlight: ‘Huat’ Manulife did to turn its agents into ambassadors

Chinese New Year is one festive season that the Chinese community in Singapore looks forward to. The celebrations usually involve visiting relatives and spending a good amount of time with the extended family. During the chats with family members, several topics would pop up, from career, marriage, and education, to possibly the topic of insurance. Insurance, however, can be a touchy topic that might lead to awkward conversations. Knowing this, Manulife Singapore came up with the campaign "Feast of Huat" to keep its target audience engaged. This resulted in the team winning silver for Best Use of Mobile - Insurance Services at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE's recent MobEx Awards 2020.

Challenge

Manulife knew that nobody likes talking about insurance, especially during Chinese New Year. Hence, it needed to think of a creative way to cut through the clutter and engage its audience in an interactive and fun way.

Strategy

Audiences on social media are known to be fickle and have short attention spans. To capture their attention, Manulife wanted to create something fresh and innovative by launching a mobile interactive AR game experience for consumers. Chinese New Year is seen as a predominantly Chinese holiday. During the festive period, Manulife wanted its interactive experience to spread beyond the Chinese community in Singapore. As such, its three core audiences were - Singaporean Chinese, regional Chinese from China and Southeast Asia, for example, and non-Chinese Singaporeans.

To amplify communications within the various communities, it engaged the help of influencers across the region. These influencers were carefully selected based on the demographics of their followers and their sphere of influence, be it in Southeast Asia, India or Greater China. They included Allan Wu, Ebi Shankara, Patricia Mok, Xiaxue, and the Ah Boys to Men cast.

Known as "Feast of Huat", the interactive AR game allows participants to "chomp" on Chinese New Year goodies without the calories.

Execution

Manulife turned to a group of individuals who understood its consumers best - 600 of its insurance agents. These insurance agents were brought on board as amplification ambassadors and two weeks before the game's official launch, Manulife organised an inter-agency organisation contesnt to let their agents try out the game. The experience enabled its agents to enthusiastically promote the game and also helped them answer any queries their customers had. As soon as the game was released to the public, Manulife's agents shared it with their clients via a special Chinese New Year WhatsApp greeting and encouraged them to play.

According to Manulife, the game was a hit with consumers across the region, including Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Over 16 days, the game was played 50,469 times, with a whopping 2,400 plays during the first day of launch on Chinese New Year Eve. On the last day, the top "muncher" of the game walked away with an SG$800 cash voucher, while the nine other winners took home SG$20 worth of vouchers.

Results

Manulife's game helped increase talkability of the brand during the campaign period, with the insurer seeing a steady increase in metrics such as word of mouth and purchase intent. In two weeks, it had a 49.5 times increase in impressions, 39.8 times increase in shares, and over 400 new social media followers gained. Its Facebook impressions increased from 2,893 in January 2020 to 17,333 in February 2020. Meanwhile, its Instagram impressions increased from 13,956 in January 2020 to 817,533 in February 2020.