BE THE LIGHT in someone’s darkest hour

Deepavali observes the triumph of light over darkness, good over evil. What better occasion for inviting people to become the light to those who need it?

The idea, built for mobile, carried a simple message: One small act can make a big difference in turning a life around. In someone’s darkest moment, any one of us can be the light that sets them on a better path. Most people are open to contributing towards a good cause but they equate ‘helping others’ with expending a lot of time and effort. Through the mobile medium, it is, in fact, literally at your fingertips.

And so an interactive story was born…one with an alternate reality that you unlock when you choose to reach out and touch a life.

MALAYSIA’S FIRST INTERACTIVE FILM THAT SAVES LIVES

With mobile being the core platform, we equated the simplest form of contribution with the act of touching a screen. And by doing so, save a life from a vicious cycle of violence.

We produced two parallel films with different outcomes, the community’s real societal problems portrayed through a young protagonist that descends into an increasingly troubled life.

The user can interact with the story by touching ‘light sources’ within the scene like street lamps and bulbs to reveal a parallel story filled with light and hope.

Timing and synchronisation was key to success

For seamless interactivity, it was crucial to match each scene to deliver a coherent story. Not only was it challenging for backend development to sync video and audio for smooth transitions between the parallel stories, but also from a film production perspective to match them scene for scene.

For a campaign duration of only 2 weeks with a small media spend RM20,000 we managed to achieve some remarkable results:

600 registrants within first 5 days of campaign launch, pledging monetary donations and/or volunteering time (for comparison, MySkills previously netted an average of 10 volunteers per year)

MySkills gets an average of 10 volunteers a year)

42% increase (from the previous year) in job placements offered by businesses and corporations

500,000 video views in 5 days, 726 shares, and over 5600 Facebook reactions

An average view-through rate of 40%, above the industry benchmark of 1.2 minutes

A halo effect resulted in Hotlink, Maxis’ prepaid division, overtaking DiGi in brand preference among Malaysian Indians