Tourism Malaysia Maintains Spanish Love Affair With Suarez Endorsement

Tourism Malaysia’s move – brokered by Mediapro – hopes to hedge on the global popularity of Suarez to drum up interest in Malaysia as a tropical holiday destination of choice, particularly for millennials.

Suarez is an interesting choice: his footballing skills are inspiring but the Uruguayan does not come without any baggage. The controversy of biting Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini in the 2014 World Cup have dogged the 30-year-old’s image despite a relatively incident-free three years at Barcelona.

Commenting on the deal, Stuart Ramalingam, vice president and head of Malaysia, Dentsu Sports Asia added, “I am sure this partnership will stretch the collaboration that the tourism ministry has with La Liga. Moreover, having a face to the partnership will also help in amplifying their campaigns a lot further.”

Tourism Malaysia is clearly pushing hard into Spain; the European country doesn’t even rank in the top 15 for inbound tourists into Malaysia (28th as of October 2015), compared to the UK (rank 10th) and France (rank 15th). Its deals with with La Liga, Sevilla FC and now Suarez are clearly trying to move the needle with what is arguably seen as a cool youth-culture platform.

Aside from Spanish football, Tourism Malaysia is the category leader among Asian government authorities and pushing hard in all areas. Over the last 3 years it has pumped in an estimated US$44.8m for its partnerships across 116 platforms in Asia (mostly on home soil). They hold a 22.1% market share of a US$203m sub-market (tourism body spend in Sport in Asia, last 3 years) effectively neck-and-neck with the China National Tourism Administration.

While most of Malaysia’s deals have been standard media inventory deals we hope the desire to effectively engage with its target audience will see more trendsetting creative campaigns, particularly in sports-related branded content… and if it can be executed with as much humour as Suarez’s memorable campaign with Abitab Bank, it could be a real winner for Malaysia, especially with the FIFA World Cup 2018 looming.