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272 Chen (2021)

1.1.2 Petronas CNY 1996 : Friends Again

Figure 1.0
The first Petronas Chinese New Year television advertisement was produced in 1996 with the title of the film called ‘Friends again’.
The film is 90 seconds long and does not have any dialogue. The story of the film portrait the classic ‘kampung’ scene where life
are simple and happy. The start of the film was two little kids playing along and having fun in the wood. Due to difference of their
ethics, their friendships somehow suddenly vanished when they are celebrating their own festivals. This film narrated the story in
the perspective of children, since the children are innocent and shy to join other ethics celebration. They rather prefer to be alone
instead of trying to blend in. However, the girl’s mother knows about the situation and as a parent the girl’s mother are more
acknowledge that celebrating other ethic festival is not a big deal from an adult perspective. In the end, the girl’s mother brought
her to the boy and they become friends again. Then the films ends with the words ‘Selamat Tahun Baru Cina’ and ‘Selamat Hari
Raya Aidilfitri’( Figure 1.0 ).

The commercial were initially produced by Petronas to wish the citizen of Malaysia during their festival celebration. This was one
of the marketing strategy that they use to promote and brand building. Each story was written based on incidents that happens
around Chinese New Year that expressed through a children point of view or an adult point of view. Since the post-election riot
incident, racial issue has been always lies between streets to streets in Malaysia. Therefore, Petronas took the first step in marketing
industry addressing and make effort to resolve this underlying issues of Malaysian. The value that this television advertisement
series mainly to promote harmony between ethics and bring peace to this land regardless language or culture. They hope the
audience will be able to learn how to respect other ethics’ culture and tradition. This is why the film does not contain any dialogue
because the producer of ‘Friends Again’ believed that there are friendship between ethics even though without saying a word.

1.3 Problem Statement

Racial relation has been one of the biggest topics across Malaysia over the past few decades. This is because Malaysia is a country
with not only one but three dominant ethics that live together in the same land. The ethnic composition of Malaysia in 1957 was
50% Bumiputera while Chinese were 40% and Indian 10%. Jomo K.S proposed that the relation between Bumiputera and Chinese
Indians started to become miserable in the late 1960s when certain politicians manipulated the elections causing chaos in the federal
territory of Kuala Lumpur (K.S, 2004). However, after years and years of educating new generations about the importance of
harmony, it is undoubtedly that this miserable relationship between ethics has decreased significantly throughout these years.

In the research, we will be looking at these topics from the perspective of advertisement content and how the company managed to
build their brand with the advertisement that contains such sensitive elements in Malaysia. The advertisement that has been chosen
by the researcher to examine the problem is Petronas Chinese New Year festive advertisement. The reason to choose the selected
advertisements is the cultural value narrated with visions and sound regarding the harmony among every ethics in Malaysia. The
problem of this research is whether these cultural values portraited in the advertisements will positively or negatively influence the
impressions between ethics.

1.1 Research questions

This study listed three main research questions :
i. Does Aesthetic Values in Petronas CNY advertisement influences audience perception towards interethnic relation ?
ii. Does Social Values in Petronas CNY advertisement influences audience perception towards interethnic relation ?
iii. Does Religious Values in Petronas CNY advertisement influences audience perception towards interethnic relation ?
iv. Is there a significant different among the age group of the audience towards audience perception of interethnic relation ?
v. Is there a significant different among the gender of the audience towards the audience perception of interethnic relation ?

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