MIHAS, or Malaysia International Halal Showcase, has a bold vision—to disrupt the global Halal industry and make it mainstream. Despite having launched almost 2 decades ago, the world’s largest Halal exhibition has a market cap below that of its trade exhibition rivals. MIHAS realised it needed to better articulate its message to the Halal community across the globe.

To address this, they wanted to implement a more cohesive Halal narrative—from food to logistics to financials, hospitality, services, pharmaceutical, modest fashion, travel and e-commerce—that would resonate with its direction. MIHAS also wanted to sharpen its overall message, redefine the monetisation strategy, stay relevant and have well-defined KPIs that would make the brand grow faster and more impactful.

AAR & Company segmented the project into three parts. The first one involved branding where MIHAS stood at par or beyond its global peers. The team identified the strategy to work on getting MIHAS’ brand presence worldwide faster through integrated marketing that covers both offline and online to complement MATRADE’s internal efforts. 

Second, the team formulated the right content strategy to support the branding effort. The work involved a balancing act between content development—official and user-generated, and the distribution of the content. And, the third one saw the team helping MIHAS with the campaigns, communication and media play via the brand owner, MATRADE, to quickly firm up MIHAS's authority as the largest Halal trade exhibition brand in the world.