Blast from the Past - MUMO Rebranding

Back in 2010, Miss Universe Malaysia Organisation (MUMO) had a bit of an image complication. The whole Miss Universe concept was seen as irrelevant and old-fashioned. As it was the new age, beauty needed to be seen paralleled with intelligence. The problem was a sort of a hangover from previous years’ beauty pageants (mostly from the US), where crowd had to witness silly and cringeworthy answers coming from a few contestants during the shows’ open-ended question session.

As a result, more and more ladies out there started to realise that if you’re not smart enough to provide intelligent answers to otherwise simple questions, your persona might just be seen as lopsided.

At the same time, MUMO had never really got far in the global competition; they have never produced a global top 16 since the 1960s. This brought MUMO to a realisation that they needed to rethink and rebrand.

In conjunction with Andrea Fonseka as the new National Director, the organisation took an approach to modernise the competition by emphasising the new Miss Universe concept; a combination of beauty, brains, street-smart, and elegant. A resonating tagline, “hip urban relevant real” was used to complement the whole campaign.

Orchan was integral to this change; the agency in charge of executing all PR initiatives for the organisation and spearheaded public awareness of the major changes afoot. We conducted press conferences to announce the new direction of MUMO, the casting calls, and the finalists. Apart from that, we also profiled the judges, sponsors, and partners involved with the pageant.

Media Training is one of Orchan’s forte, and as a way to uphold the campaign’s “new girl” concept, we offered the finalists such training, where they would be taught the tips and tricks in dealing with the media and in answering questions in general. MUMO compelled, and the training became two episodes of the TV series they were doing, and has since became the norm in subsequent years.

Rebranding MUMO wasn’t about a total change of the brand, but it was about shifting the perception slightly in order to be seen differently. MUMO was and still is a key player in the Asian beauty pageant industry; they only needed to step further ahead by applying a ‘minor tweak, huge difference’ approach to their overall image, and Orchan was proud to be part of that change.

Miss Universe Malaysia 2010

Orchan’s Director, Craig J Selby conducts Media Training for the Miss Universe participants.

Craig J Selby and Farrell Tan teaching the ropes in handling media

Rebranding of Miss Universe Malaysia