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RHB Group Bets on a Gamer's Story to Redefine Belief
RHB Group's 'Belief' is a 2019 Malaysian finance brand film created by FCB Kuala Lumpur that follows professional gamer Chai Yee Fung, known as Mushi, and the parental decision to support an unconventional career in esports, released across RHB's social media channels for Chinese New Year.
The film launched in February 2019 as part of RHB's ongoing 'Challenger Series', a platform built around real Malaysian stories of people who defy conventional expectations. The campaign carries the brand's overarching positioning idea, 'Together We Progress', translating that platform promise into a seasonal Lunar New Year narrative rooted in intergenerational trust. Rather than defaulting to the reunion-table imagery typical of Chinese New Year advertising in Malaysia, 'Belief' centres the tension between parental expectation and a child's uncharted ambition.
In Malaysia, Chinese New Year advertising represents one of the most competitive creative moments of the year, with virtually every major financial institution, telco, and retail brand vying for emotional resonance. RHB Group chose to anchor its 2019 entry not in sentiment alone but in a documented true story, grounding the narrative in the lived experience of Mushi, one of the country's most recognised professional gamers. The strategic decision to feature talent from the esports world — still a profession many Malaysian families viewed with scepticism in 2019 — gave the film a specificity and a friction point that generic festive storytelling rarely achieves. As noted by Clapboard, the campaign contains one media asset, a single film, placing the full weight of communication on narrative execution rather than a multi-format rollout.
RHB Group identified a durable strategic insight at the intersection of generational change and Malaysian family dynamics. The finance brand recognised that Chinese New Year, as a cultural moment built around homecoming and family judgment, carries an implicit anxiety for anyone whose life choices fall outside traditional definitions of success. By featuring professional gamer Mushi and his parents' support for his esports career, the 2019 campaign converts that anxiety into affirmation, positioning RHB as the bank that believes in progress on the individual's own terms.
In Malaysia, the banking sector is characterised by intense competition among established institutions. RHB Group's peer set in this market includes Maybank, which has built a long record of emotionally driven festive campaigns, and CIMB, another active participant in seasonal storytelling. Against these competitors, RHB's 'Challenger Series' differentiates through the consistent use of real people and true events rather than fictional archetypes, a choice that lends the work an authenticity that scripted narratives struggle to replicate. As reported by Marketing Interactive, the 'Belief' film was described as celebrating determination and courage while challenging conventional career expectations, framing RHB not as a conventional financial institution but as a partner in unconventional ambition.
The decision to distribute 'Belief' through RHB's own social media channels reflects a broader trend in Malaysian advertising toward owned-channel storytelling for long-form content, allowing the brand to retain full creative control while measuring engagement directly. The esports angle also gave the campaign a natural audience overlap with younger Malaysian consumers, a demographic segment every major bank in the country was actively courting in 2019 through digital-first strategies.
FCB Kuala Lumpur structured 'Belief' as a documentary-inflected narrative film drawing directly from the true events of Chai Yee Fung's career trajectory. The film's creative strategy places the parents at the emotional centre of the story rather than the gamer himself, a deliberate inversion that reframes the definition of belief from personal determination to the courage required to trust someone else's vision for their own life.
Ong Shi Ping, chief creative officer at FCB, was cited in coverage of the campaign, with the agency's long-standing relationship with RHB Group described by FCB as a decade-long partnership built around what the agency characterises as 'intelligent disobedience', according to brandinginasia.com. That philosophy is visible in the creative execution: where competitors default to warmth and reunion, 'Belief' introduces conflict, parental doubt, and eventual conviction as its dramatic architecture. RHB Group CMO Abdul Sani Abdul Murad was also quoted in coverage of the campaign's positioning, underscoring that the 'Together We Progress' platform requires stories with genuine stakes rather than manufactured emotion.
As part of the 'Challenger Series', 'Belief' sits alongside other FCB-produced RHB films including 'Breaking Barriers', released in May 2019 and centred on teacher Amy Mistaka and student Yip Kah Szhen, and earlier entries such as 'See Beyond Colour', 'A Spark for Change', 'Love Carries On', and 'Forgiveness', as documented by marketech-apac.com. This serialised approach to brand storytelling gives each individual film the accumulated weight of a continuing editorial voice rather than a standalone seasonal advertisement. Production credits beyond the agency and brand leadership are not fully detailed in publicly available documentation for the 'Belief' film specifically.
No independently verified third-party performance data for the 'Belief' campaign is publicly available beyond social engagement figures recorded at time of coverage. According to Clapboard and adsoftheworld.com, the film reached approximately 118,000 Facebook views, 1,300 reactions, 154 comments, and 971 shares at the point metrics were documented. These figures reflect organic and owned-channel distribution without confirmed paid amplification data.
For a single-asset film distributed through brand-owned social channels in Malaysia rather than a paid broadcast or cinema buy, the share-to-reaction ratio — nearly one share for every reaction — is a structurally meaningful signal. Shares indicate active endorsement rather than passive consumption, and in the context of a Chinese New Year film in Malaysia, where festive content circulates heavily within family and social networks during the holiday period, this distribution pattern suggests the narrative achieved the cross-generational resonance the strategy intended.
The Clapboard Score for 'Belief' is 61 out of 100. This mid-range score reflects the campaign's genuine creative coherence and strategic clarity while acknowledging that a single-film execution without documented reach amplification limits the overall assessment. The true-events approach and the specificity of the esports narrative are structural strengths. The campaign's constraint is scale: one asset, one channel category, and an engagement footprint that, while positive in composition, remains modest relative to the largest Lunar New Year advertising moments in the Malaysian market.
'Belief' is a 2019 Chinese New Year film by RHB Group and FCB Kuala Lumpur. It follows professional gamer Chai Yee Fung, known as Mushi, and his parents' decision to support his esports career. The film is part of RHB's 'Challenger Series' and carries the brand's 'Together We Progress' positioning.
'Belief' was created by FCB Kuala Lumpur for RHB Group. The agency's chief creative officer Ong Shi Ping and RHB CMO Abdul Sani Abdul Murad were both cited in coverage of the campaign, which launched in February 2019 across RHB's social media channels in Malaysia.
Mushi is the professional gaming identity of Malaysian esports player Chai Yee Fung. RHB featured him because his career path — supported by parents who defied conventional expectations — embodied the brand's 'Together We Progress' message and gave the 2019 Chinese New Year campaign a specific, true-events foundation.
The RHB Challenger Series is a long-running FCB Kuala Lumpur-led brand platform using real Malaysian stories to position RHB as a bank for people challenging convention. Documented entries include 'Belief', 'Breaking Barriers', 'See Beyond Colour', and 'Forgiveness', as noted by marketech-apac.com and brandinginasia.com.
According to Clapboard and adsoftheworld.com, 'Belief' recorded approximately 118,000 Facebook views, 1,300 reactions, 154 comments, and 971 shares at the time metrics were documented. The share-to-reaction ratio is a positive structural indicator for a single-asset, owned-channel Lunar New Year film.
'Belief' receives a Clapboard Score of 61 out of 100. The score reflects strong narrative specificity and strategic coherence rooted in true events, offset by a modest single-asset execution and an engagement footprint that remains limited relative to the largest Malaysian Chinese New Year advertising campaigns.
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