Home-Grown PR Firm Recognised for its Youth Engagement Campaign.

Local Public Relations consultancy, Perspective Strategies, won the industry’s most coveted Gold Award for the Best Campaign of the Year at the recent Malaysia PR Awards (MPRA) for Durex Malaysia’s #SOMEBODYLIKEME Choose2Protect campaign.

The winning campaign is an ongoing peer-led outreach programme initiated for Durex Malaysia, in partnership with AIESEC in Malaysia, Women’s Aid Organisation (WAO) and the Federation of Reproductive Health Associations, Malaysia (FRHAM) to educate Malaysian youths on sexual and reproductive health with a focus on sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

The winning team led by Perspective Strategies Managing Director, Andy See Teong Leng (sixth from the left).

This is the second year in a row that Perspective Strategies had won the industry’s top award. Its internal communication work for AmBank Group in the wake of the merger with MBF Cards grabbed the highest honour in the previous year’s event organised by the Public Relations Consultants’ Association of Malaysia (PRCA Malaysia).

Andy See, Managing Director of Perspective Strategies said, “We are proud and honoured to once again win the Gold Award for the Best Campaign of the Year. The win demonstrates the firm’s strategic capability as well as the spread of communication talents that we have which enable us to push for strategies and campaigns to have meaningful engagements with stakeholders.”

“The Durex #SOMEBODYLIKEME Choose2Protect campaign, with its multiple stakeholders and diverse interests, is an excellent example for Perspective Strategies to showcase our capability and diverse skills.”

“We need these skills as the reality is stakeholders today demand meaningful engagements with companies and brands. This means, straightforward media relations campaign may not work effectively today – it demands that brands and companies work with stakeholders directly. In the case of the Durex #SOMEBODYLIKEME Choose2Protect campaign, it was all about engaging youth on a peer-to-peer mode,” he added.

Perspective Strategies is an agency founded in 2006, focused on delivering the full range of communication and public relations services including communication strategy development, issues management, corporate reputation and brand communication.

Given Malaysia’s largely conservative sentiments when it comes to sex education, Perspective Strategies conceptualised the Campaign using the peer-to-peer education as a strategy to break down communication barriers and engage youths on this important yet difficult subject. The effort yielded tremendous results. Since August 2013, Durex and its group of Peer Educators have reached out to more than 30,000 students nationwide and counting.

The deployment of a multi-faceted communication approach to empower youth to be at the forefront of change resulted in the campaign’s success in winning the “Best Corporate Social Responsibility” and the “Best Public Affairs” awards at this MPRA. In addition, the Campaign was recognised for its success in challenging youths’ ignorance on HIV with its creative use of social media in conjunction with World AIDS Day, taking a “Certificate of Excellence” for the “Best Use of Digital” award category.

“We are humbled by the recognition from the industry once again. For a local agency, this is certainly very significant and meaningful to us. Importantly, the wins over the last two years – one in internal communication and the other in stakeholder engagement, represents the two growth areas of PR which we are pursuing as a firm,” said Andy See.

The recent MPRA is the seventh edition organised annually by the PRCA Malaysia. It serves as a platform to recognise the country’s public relations professionals for the meaningful and effective campaigns and communication programmes executed for their organisations and clients. This year’s awards covered 14 categories including the Product Brand Development Award, Crisis or Issues Management Award, Technology Award, Consumer Launch Award, Best Use of Digital and the Environmental Award.