DIGI Telecommunications Bhd and Guinness Anchor Marketing Sdn Bhd’s Tiger Beer were the only two Malaysian campaigns to win at the Asian Marketing Effectiveness (AME) 2010 awards held in Shanghai on March 24.

Organised by Media magazine, the annual AME awards honour the best work of marketers and agencies in the region based on effectiveness.

DiGi and its creative agency Naga DDB won a bronze in the Best Sustained Success category for its Yellow Coverage Fellow (YCF) campaign. NagaDDB, part of the Foetus International group, created the YCF in 2006 to address the public perception that DiGi had the poorest coverage, compared with Maxis and Celcom.

Since then the YCF has become an icon with a cult following. The campaign won NagaDDB Malaysia’s first gold at the AME 2007 awards for Most Effective Use of Advertising in Asia, and a silver for Best Ideas.

“The campaign corresponded with DiGi’s aggressive business growth with 40% and 30% gains in subscribers and revenue respectively,” said Tai Kam Leong, strategic planning director for NagaDDB in an email interview yesterday. As at 4Q09, DiGi had a subscriber base of 7.7 million. “The YCF, in all its iterations over the years, consistently surpassed industry benchmarks in ad recall and ad likability,” added Tai.

Tiger Beer and a group of agencies under G2 KL (comprising G2, G2 Direct Interactive and G2 Public Relations) as well as creative agency Saatchi & Saatchi Malaysia won a bronze in the Most Effective Use of Product Design And Packaging category for its Stand Out With Tiger Beer campaign. G2 KL is part of Grey Group Malaysia.

One of the key events which drove  interest  in the campaign, centred around the repackaged beer bottles, was the “Stand Out” party for Malaysian bloggers. Subsequent social media and traditional media coverage of the event helped drive perception of Tiger Beer as a “beer for good times and fun” up by 14%, according to Synovate.

This article appeared on the Media & Advertising page, The Edge Financial Daily, March 30, 2010.