Maggi Malaysia’s women empowerment and upskilling initiative called Program Mentor Wanita Cukup Berani Maggi won a total of four awards, two each from gold, one each from silver and bronze, at the recently-concluded global and national PR Award events.
The PR agency for the Maggi campaign is Perspective Strategies Sdn Bhd, a local boutique public relations and communications firm, which has been supporting the campaign over the last two years.
Perspective Strategies brought home two awards – a gold for “Client Communications in Covid-19” category, and a bronze for “Consumer Communications (Products)” in the 10th edition of the PRGN Best Practices Awards 2021. The virtual awards ceremony was held on Dec 8, 2021.
The award platform is organized by the Public Relations Global Network (PRGN), one of the world’s largest international public relations networks founded in 1992, with more than 50 locations around the world.
For the national PR award, the Maggi campaign won a gold and a silver in the “Consumer Launch” and “Corporate Branding” categories respectively in the 13th edition of the Malaysia Public Relations Awards 2021 (MPRA 2021). The event ceremony was held as a hybrid event for the first time on Dec 17, 2021.
The MPRA are the industry awards organized by Public Relations & Communications Association of Malaysia (PRCA Malaysia) to recognize the best PR and communications campaigns of public relations agencies in Malaysia.
Speaking on the winning campaign, Perspective Strategies partner and executive director Tan May Leesaid, “We are delighted for the recognition accorded to this campaign by the PR fraternity and indeed, it has been a very rewarding and exciting journey together with Maggi and Nestle Malaysia.
“We look forward to continuously work on PR campaigns where we focus not just on brand outreach, but also the opportunity to support meaningful community outreach programmes, especially in today’s challenging Covid-19 pandemic,” she said.
Tan said the PR campaign leveraged on a multi-channel, multi-pronged approach in seeding out core messages not only via media platforms, but also through various grassroots channels, and programme participants centred on showcasing the transformation of ordinary women to inspire others to join the mentoring journey with Maggi.
“While it is important that a brand seeks to acquire a larger market share, it is also critical that an emotive ‘share of voice’ or brand love is garnered through a community-focused initiative, which has come through discernibly via this PR campaign,” she added.
Nestle Malaysia business executive officer Geetha Balakrishna said the Program Mentor Wanita Cukup Berani Maggi started as an aspiration to empower and inspire Malaysian women to gain the self-confidence by equipping them with the necessary skills so that they can make a positive difference for herself and her family.
“The immense positive response and stories we received in 2020 inspired and encouraged us to magnify the impact of this journey in 2021. It is our passion and commitment to continue building on our efforts to impact even more women and address their wider needs for growth as we want all participants in this programme to be emboldened not only in the kitchen, but in business as well,” she said.
Launched in August 2020, the Program Mentor Wanita Cukup Berani Maggi is a nationwide campaign in partnership with Google Malaysia via Women Will, a Grow with Google programme, which aims to encourage women to be brave in stepping out of their comfort zone and taking on new challenges through a series of online upskilling workshops focusing on imparting self-confidence and awareness, improving business and digital skills as well as a Masterclass on ‘How to run a food business’.
As part of the mentorship journey, Maggi rolled out a 6-episode TV reality series – Resipi Berani Maggi – to showcase the transformative journey of women while inspiring more women to step outside their comfort zone to try something new – embracing the Tak Kenal, Tak Cinta spirit. Now in its 2nd year running, more than 2,000 women have participated in the Program Mentor Wanita Cukup Berani Maggi.
At the global PRGN Best Practice Awards 2021, Perspective Strategies collected a total of seven awards – two golds, two silvers and three bronzes, and emerged as the agency with the highest number of awards.
The agency also took home a total of six PR awards, comprising of one gold, four silvers and one bronze, at the Malaysia PR Awards 2021, including the silver award in the inaugural Best ‘ADAPT’ Agency category that recognizes companies with effective pivot strategy during the Covid-19 pandemic.
