Netccentric’s Nuffnang Lab Research: Marketing dynamics shifting this Raya season

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the last two Hari Raya seasons had proven to be extremely challenging for the Muslim community throughout Malaysia.

Due to restrictions imposed as a result of the Movement Control Order (MCO), certain determined Malaysians had to even seek out ‘lorong tikus’ last year in their attempts to Balik Kampung last year.

This year, though, given the high vaccination rates and a subsequent return to ‘normality’, it looks like a strong comeback for marketers.

Nuffnang Sdn Bhd country manager Kausern Hieu said that its research arm, Nuffnang Lab, has successfully uncovered what has changed over previous Hari Raya seasons and what is set to excite consumers this year.

Nuffnang is part of ASX-listed Netccentric Limited which has become synonymous with being “Asia’s Pioneering Digital Growth Ecosystem”. Nuffnang is its flagship influencer marketing platform which connects clients to more than 15,000 influencers, key opinion leaders, celebrities, and content creators, who collectively reach over 20 million engaged social media followers throughout Southeast Asia, making it the largest social media influencer community in Asia.

Nuffnang Lab, in turn, is a rebranded division within Nuffnang that runs communications strategies and brand research internally, also serving marketers who would like to ‘deep dive’ into more consumer insights.

With Nuffnang’s numerous successes and experiences in launching thousands of influencer and content campaigns, Nuffnang Lab would also research data points from previous campaigns to study influencer marketing patterns, too.

With these insights, both Nuffnang and brands can make insight-driven decisions for campaigns, making them relevant and impactful for their target consumers. This results in keeping brands updated with latest ‘best practices’.

Nuffnang Lab’s Lead Koh Huiying (pic) said that, through the Raya study, the company has come to some ‘solid conclusions’ on evolving best practices to reach out to consumers this Raya season.

Known as ‘Project Ketupat’, the 2022 Raya Sentiment Insights Executive Summary cuts to the chase as to what consumers are looking forward to this Raya festive season – and how marketers can better communicate with consumers.

In total, there are various key themes with three key takeaway examples being as follows:

Women’s role during Raya celebrations is far more influential than we think. During focus group discussions, there was a recurring theme of women playing a huge part in preserving family and cultural traditions of the celebration – from the itinerary planning, work distribution, clothes/theme selection to preservation of traditional food and culture.

Understanding family dynamics during Raya can enable marketers to better connect with their consumers.

2. Have a hyperfocus campaign strategy as market has been disrupted by algorithms

Huiying gave another glimpse of the study to Marketing Magazine Asia by sharing that, given the higher digital adoption of the past two years, consumers are used to being served more and more personalised content and ads with the help of algorithms.

“It gets even more imperative that brands capture their target audience with the right brand message to stay relevant. With this development, we observed that having a hyperfocus campaign strategy might work better for consumers this year as they want to watch, listen and consume content that is relatable and fitting to them,” said Huiying. “The one-size-fits-all approach may weaken a brand’s personality and standing, especially when competitors are getting more personalised in terms of their communication strategies.”

She also explained that the study has “opened our eyes to Raya sentiments that we may not have seen before – be it positive or negative.”

For numerous Muslims, this will be the first meaningful celebration with their loved ones since the pandemic broke out. “With some bringing new family members back, and others experiencing ‘forever absences’, the meaning of ‘togetherness’ or ‘completion’ will feel different this year. We think that communication strategy for brands will be extra thrilling this year.”

“Marketers’ messages do not necessarily need to be soppy. Heightened excitement and motivation are great ways to create positive emotions amongst consumers for brands this Raya,” added Huiying.

In this light, Nuffnang is organising a one-off webinar for marketers and businesses to learn about current market sentiments and how they can move forward with their communication strategies this Raya.

The webinar will take place on 10th March 2022 (Thursday) 3pm virtually. Take your front seat here.