WORKS

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Launched in 1999, before the dot-com boom.

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Before Cannes had a Titanium Lion.

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Before “interactive advertising” formally published in 2000.

| Launched in 1999, before the dot-com boom. | Before Cannes had a Titanium Lion. | Before “interactive advertising” formally published in 2000.

 

Business Driven & Tech Leadership Campaign

The Mother of All Interactive.

  • Role:
    Senior Art Director

    Market:
    Malaysia 

    Objective: Sell Twinhead laptops and build brand demand with zero retail presence, creating urgent consumer desire and driving website enquiries among senior professionals.

    Market Context: Early internet era: only 3% had online access, <10% had a home computer, and laptops cost roughly a month's salary for the target senior managers. Personal laptop search habits were virtually nonexistent; news and entertainment were fully analogue.

    Key Actions & Strategy:

    • Created Malaysia's first brand-edutainment, a weekly serialised murder mystery, leveraging habitual newspaper story columns.

    • Introduced a high-value laptop prize to drive digital migration: readers logged online to solve the mystery, exploring product pages and submitting enquiries.

    • Turned market and technical constraints into strategic leverage, making the campaign pioneering both culturally and technically.

    Results & P&L Impact:

    • Converted offline readers into online participants, achieving a first-of-its-kind behaviour shift pre-Kindle, pre-social media.

    • Repositioned laptops from an optional gadget to a strategic necessity for senior professionals.

    • Generated brand pull and enquiries despite zero retail footprint.

    Awards & Recognition:

    • Malaysia's first cross-platform interactive campaign, predating the formal recognition of “interactive advertising" in 2000.

    • Established a precedent for digital/interactive marketing in the region.

    Technical & Creative Innovation:

    • Engineered a print-to-web serial narrative to convert habitual newspaper readers into active online participants.

    Legacy & Business Impact:

    • Pioneered interactive campaigns in a largely analogue market.

    • Expanded the addressable laptop market and created a blueprint for interactive brand storytelling.

    Signature POV:
    “We engineered desire first — sales followed the click.”

In 1999, the internet was still a relatively unfamiliar concept to most people.
Only 3% of Malaysians were online.
Fewer than 10% had a computer at home.
There was no “interactive marketing” category at award shows.
No one knew what a digital campaign was.

But I knew something was shifting.

People weren’t just reading newspapers for news.
They were hooked on the story columns—
serialised fiction, cliffhangers, and emotional chapters that ran week by week.

So I asked—what if we moved that addiction online?

The mission: change behaviour.

Turn newspaper readers into online participants.
Not by telling them to—but by pulling them in.

We created Malaysia’s first cross-platform interactive campaign—
before anyone even had a word for it.

A murder mystery.
Printed weekly in the same corner of the same page.
One episode per week. To solve the case?

You had to go online.

Log on. Follow the clues. Piece together the truth.
And maybe—just maybe—win a laptop worth a third of your monthly salary.

We weren’t just here to promote products.

We were here to move Malaysia forward—
from reading news on paper to clicking through it,
from turning pages to tapping keyboards,
from passive consumption to active participation.

Not just to sell laptops — but to create a world where more people would need one.

This was Malaysia’s first interactive campaign—possibly the world’s.
Launched in 1999, before the dot-com boom,
before Cannes had a Titanium Lion,
before “interactive advertising” was even defined (formally published in 2000).

This campaign was made to serve its purpose:
to rewrite the rules of consumer engagement.

For Twinhead, for the industry it stood for,
and for every curious mind brave enough to click into the unknown.

This wasn’t just a campaign.
It was the Mother of all Interactives.
The Father of consumer engagement innovation.