CASE STUDY: Prudential ‘gives back’ to Malaysians via Project Listen by Naga DDB

Background

To Celebrate Prudential's 88th year in Malaysia, the insurer wanted to recognise the people who had made Prudential what it is today. The challenge was to give the customers something meaningful as well as relevant to the company's ethos of 'always listening, always understanding'.

Many insurers speak of humanising insurance, but do not walk the talk. It's a category that offers protection and care, but it only has transactional relationships with the customers.

Prudential saw this as the perfect opportunity to bring to life what 'always listening, always understanding' means to the company, and through it, hopefully reframe the way the insurance category talks and engages with Malaysia.

Aim

Project Listen is a commitment in wanting to listen and celebrate the many exemplary cases of its strength at work. It is a depository of 'life experiences' for Malaysians to draw strength and inspiration from. Prudential hoped that Project Listen would inspire more meaningful relationships between insurer and policyholder.

Execution

Produced by Naga DDB, five interview videos consisting of a diverse group of individuals were launched on Prudential’s website, projectlisten.com.my. Examples included a mother recollecting the moment she was told her newborn had a hole in the heart and a former Pudu prison inmate who spoke about finding humanity in a place assumed to be devoid of it.

Digital was the central repository of these stories, while TV was the primary reach vehicle. Social networks were used as targeted platforms too. Prudential reached out to influential bloggers and tapped its R U Ready MY Facebook fan base. In addition, the insurer collaborated with social sharing groups to encourage their user base to participate in Project Listen.

To encourage the audience members to share their own stories, Prudential pledged RM1 (US$0.3) to PRUkasih for every share. PRUkasih is Prudential's corporate social responsibility initiative that provides financial protection to underprivileged families in urban areas.

Result

After going live in mid-May, Project Listen is an ongoing commitment from Prudential to listen to as many Malaysian voices. In its first two weeks of launch, projectlisten.com.my recorded more than 52,000 unique visitors.

Prudential aims to achieve* a goal of RM1 million (US$ 322,571) in funding for PRUkasih with the help of all Malaysians.

* Update, 24 Aug: When originally published, this article incorrectly said that Prudential had already achieved the goal.