The challenge
IHH speaks to the whole country. Raya is sacred to one community and shared by all of it. A national brand has to honour both.
Most healthcare festive films go one of two ways. Some stay clinical, so the season never really lands. Others reach so wide that any brand could have made them.
IHH wanted a third option: a film built on something Malaysians recognise, told quietly, connecting the season to IHH’s promise, Care. For Good. That is what its hospitals do every day.
At Raya, Malaysian families always prepare an extra chair.
The strategy
The extra chair
Every Malaysian family knows this one: the extra chair.
At Raya, at every rumah terbuka, nobody counts chairs. You just put out more. Someone might drop by, come late, travel from far, or have nowhere else to be. Extra chairs, extra hati. That’s silaturahim: making space before you know who’s arriving.
That’s why we built the film on it. Silaturahim is Malay-Muslim. The chair it puts out has held every kind of Malaysian. The same shape as the brief: sacred to one community, shared by all of it.
And it describes a hospital. IHH’s hospitals make space for whoever needs it. Malaysian families do the same thing.
How we made it
- Concept and scriptA single Malaysian insight, told without forcing the emotion
- Direction and cinematographyReal moments, real warmth, no festive clichés
- Multicultural castingHari Raya as Malaysians actually celebrate it
- Music and post-productionSupporting the story without overwhelming it
In motion
The film
The outcome
A quiet symbol of care
IHH ran the film itself at group level and across all 18 of its hospitals in Malaysia, on social, internal communications and brand touchpoints through the season.
The extra chair became a way to say what care looks like here: room made for someone before you know they need it.
