Dove’s Chinese New Year (CNY) campaign in Malaysia started with a music video, then layered 78 creators and publisher placements onto it to generate over 43 million views. Working with AnyMind Group, the Unilever-owned brand produced an original song and video with local creative studio 1119 Entertainment, coordinated creators across YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Xiaohongshu, and added a publisher layer designed to move audiences from attention toward purchase consideration.

Yoong Xin Loh, Senior Account Manager at AnyMind Group’s Kuala Lumpur office, managed the campaign from planning through execution. She coordinates what AnyMind calls its integrated tech ecosystem, combining AnyTag, the company’s influencer management platform, with AnyDigital, which handles media placements across premium publisher networks.

The brief was to make Dove’s Hya Keratin Shine Protective Nourishing Oil relevant during the CNY period and sustain that relevance beyond the seasonal spike. Rather than beginning with individual product recommendations, AnyMind and Dove used the music video to establish the campaign’s “festive hair shine” concept, giving creators an existing piece of cultural content to build on.

“CNY songs are a huge part of the festive culture in Malaysia, and people genuinely look forward to them every year,” Yoong says. “After seeing how well 1119 Entertainment performed the year before, we saw an opportunity to ride on that momentum instead of creating another typical festive campaign.”

The approach ultimately reached 16.1 million users, generated 43.6 million total views, and drove 97,600 engagements across Malaysia, according to AnyMind Group.

Why the Music Video Launched Before the Creators

1119 Entertainment had produced CNY content that performed well in the prior year cycle. AnyMind proposed building Dove’s campaign around that existing cultural momentum rather than developing a new creative concept from scratch.

“Influencers are great for authentic product recommendations, but a music video creates a bigger cultural moment,” Yoong explains. “It gave creators something exciting to participate in, making the campaign feel much more connected and memorable instead of repetitive ads.”

The music video launched first across YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Xiaohongshu. As it built organic attention, creators began producing content using the campaign music or sharing their own festive hair care routines on those same platforms. The publisher layer followed, with placements reinforcing product messages and promotional offers to drive purchase consideration.

Without the music video, the campaign would likely have defaulted to a more traditional influencer execution, Yoong says. “It wouldn’t have stood out as much,” she says. “During CNY, brands are competing for attention, so having a strong entertainment piece really helped us cut through the noise.”

Three Layers, Three Distinct Jobs

The campaign ran creator content, a music video, and publisher placements. Each layer was assigned a specific commercial role rather than left to overlap.

“An integrated campaign means every channel has its own role while working towards the same objective,” Yoong says. “Instead of running separately, each layer builds on the others to create one connected consumer journey.”

AnyTag served as the operational backbone for the influencer layer, managing all 78 creators centrally, tracking deliverables in real time, and routing content through a dual-layer approval process where creators submitted posts for review by both AnyMind’s team and the client before publication. That process kept the brief focused without scripting creator content.

“We kept the brief simple and focused on the key objectives instead of scripting everything,” Yoong says. “Creators are provided with creative freedom because they know best how to engage with their audience.”

The result was format-varied output across 78 creators: festive get-ready-with-me videos on Instagram, dance challenges on TikTok, product reviews on Xiaohongshu, each carrying the campaign’s festive hair care premise without appearing identical.

Expanding the Creator Pool Beyond Beauty

The 78-creator pool drew from beauty, fashion, fitness, and hairstyling categories. Beauty influencers remained the core, but limiting selection to that vertical would have restricted the range of lifestyle contexts in which the product appeared.

“Dove is an everyday personal care brand, so we didn’t want to limit ourselves to beauty creators,” Yoong says. “Fashion, fitness, and hairstyling creators allowed us to showcase the product naturally in different lifestyles and reach a broader audience.”

AnyTag’s AI-driven discovery tool filtered creators based on audience demographic alignment with the brand. Fashion and fitness creators often experience hair damage from frequent styling, the case study notes, making the Hya Keratin Shine product a natural fit for their content.

One creator outperformed the rest of the pool. Kimberly independently generated over 4.9 million views, according to AnyMind Group’s data. “Kimberly consistently creates simple but high-quality content that connects well with audiences,” Yoong says. “We believed her content style matched the campaign well, although her final performance still exceeded our expectations.”

Conversion Engines, Not Just Awareness Channels

The publisher layer ran through Leesharing, a digital publisher serving Malaysia’s Mandarin-speaking community with lifestyle and daily information content. AnyMind used AnyDigital to secure placements including a website advertorial, Facebook posts across Leesharing’s official and partner pages, and content on Instagram and Xiaohongshu.

Conversion was an assigned role for Leesharing from the start, rather than awareness alone. “We wanted the influencers to focus on authentic recommendations, driving engagement and attention, while riding on the music video hype,” Yoong says. “The publishers were better suited to explain product benefits, promotions, and drive a clear call-to-action.”

Consumers in Malaysia visit platforms like Leesharing specifically to discover deals and evaluate value-for-money products, Yoong explains. Products featured on those platforms carry commercial credibility rather than reading as interruption advertising.

The conversion mechanic was a Sanrio ceramic pot gift-with-purchase offered on qualifying Dove purchases. The publisher placements generated over 1.1 million in reach and 757,000 views.

Why Multi-Layer Campaigns Break Down Before They Start

“The biggest challenge was aligning everyone around one creative vision,” Yoong says. “From songwriting and production to creator content and publisher messaging, everything needed to feel connected while staying on schedule.”

Barriers inside most brand marketing organizations make that alignment difficult before a campaign even launches. “Traditional corporate structures divide media, creator marketing, and publisher buys across isolated teams and competing KPIs,” Yoong explains. Overcoming that requires both a change in budget allocation and operational infrastructure capable of coordinating layers in real time.

Timing is a compounding barrier. “Seasonal campaigns move very quickly, so everyone needs to respond fast,” Yoong says. She advises starting festive campaigns roughly six months before launch, because top creators and production partners book out quickly and compressed timelines force decisions that undermine the coordination multi-layer campaigns require.

Engagement Is the Key Metric

All three campaign layers exceeded projections. According to Yoong, the 1119 Entertainment music video overachieved by 44.7 times on reach and 2.87 times on views. The KOL layer outperformed by 77.13 times on reach and 69.72 times on views. Publisher placements through Leesharing exceeded projections by 1.51 times on reach and 2.37 times on views. The entertainment-first structure was the primary driver, Yoong says: the 1119 Entertainment partnership generated the initial organic interest that the creator and publisher layers then capitalized on.

Yoong points to the engagement figure, 97,600 interactions including likes, comments, shares, and saves, as the more honest measure of whether the campaign worked. “In a crowded festive season like Chinese New Year, raw impressions can be inflated by auto-plays, but high engagement proves the content genuinely resonated with Malaysian audiences,” she says.

The volume of shares and saves indicates consumers were actively passing the festive trend to others or bookmarking the product ahead of CNY shopping, a movement from passive viewer toward active brand consideration.

Yoong expects more Malaysian brands to move toward multi-layer campaigns, with budget alignment and internal structure remaining the primary barriers. “Many brands still plan channels separately, while integrated planning requires both investment and alignment,” she says.

Image source: AnyMind Group

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