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SingapoRediscovers: Making Singapore an adventure for families
We collaborated with the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) on an integrated marketing campaign. We wanted to encourage families to explore Singapore again, by showing them the exciting things they can do together in a fun and convenient way.
TEAM | SEAN TAN, ROWENA LIOW, RACHEL LAW, REGINA HO, NUR SABIRAH AND JANELLE TEO
PROJECT DATE | 26 FEBRUARY 2021
SOURCES CITED | SEE SLIDE DECK
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FirstObj
Campaign details
Brand owner: Singapore Tourism Board
Leading agency: Zenith Media
Country: Singapore
Industry: Domestic Tourism
Media channels: Facebook - community creation and paid media; YouTube - online video; Internet - microsites; Outdoor, out-of-home (MRT trains, bus shelters); Earned media, shares and likes; Mobile app
Target audience: Families, with kids 4 to 12 years old
Market background
Tourism is a key industry for Singapore, with total international visitor arrivals exceeding 19 million in 2019.
With the pandemic, international visitor arrivals had fallen significantly. August 2020 saw only 8,910 international visitors, down sharply from 1.74 million the year before. This made reviving domestic tourism a key pillar of supporting Singapore’s economy.
As such, the Singapore Tourism Board began an initiative to give every Singaporean aged 18 and above S$100 to spend on local hotel stays, attraction tickets and tours. Special packages and promotions were also introduced to further encourage domestic tourism. The aim was to encourage Singapore; particularly families, to 'rediscover' what their country had to offer. Hence, the initiative was aptly called 'SingapoRediscovers'.
Insights and objectives
Our team was tasked with creating an integrated marketing campaign targeted at Singaporean families with young children. We saw this initiative as a unique opportunity for families to have day trips together.
Parents often find it difficult to plan and host outings, as it's typically exhausting, cumbersome and time-consuming. We conducted a focus group with several parents, discussing struggles they may face with planning family outings, and the day-to-day issues they put up with, as parents of children. From this, we uncovered several insights:
We understood from these insights that their motivations for visiting local attractions wasn't inherent in planning outings, but rather in spending time with their children on these outings; to bond together with them, and to be a part of their learning, enrichment and childhood development.
Our communication objective, therefore, was to encourage families to explore Singapore again by showing them the exciting things they can do together in a fun and convenient way. This was apparent in our big idea: Making Singapore an adventure for families.
User persona creation
To help us better visualise our demographic's insights, we created a user persona, seen in the video above. This also helps the team streamline the campaign planning process, while ensuring that it continues to strike a chord with its intended audience.
Mobile application platforming
We wanted to make planning outings as convenient and enticing as possible; to maximise their gains, while minimising their pains. Our team found that the ideal solution was to design a mobile application, with a campaign aimed at promoting the experiences that using the app would bring; and in turn, the family outings you go on. Parents wanted the following:
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Easy planning (locations, activities, etc.)
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Easy budgeting (dining costs, activity costs, etc.)
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Learning opportunities for their children
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Family bonding opportunities
From shadowing conducted on our focus group, our team uncovered that most parents would use a combination of Google searches, Facebook groups and word-of-mouth from friends, to obtain information about attractions, dining outlets, budgeting and recommendations based on online reviews.
A dedicated mobile app would serve as a one-stop solution platform, where parents could easily obtain all the information they needed to plan a family outing to a local attraction.
It would also serve as the entry-point for our campaign; showing parents where and how the SingapoRediscovers vouchers could be redeemed, and special packages that would guarantee the parents maximum value for money.
We also introduced gamification into the app, providing enticing incentives such as coupons for discounts off popular shopping platforms, which can be purchased with an in-app currency points.
These points can be earned when parents visit local attractions and complete a combination of tasks in a challenge with their children (as shown in the video).
Community creation
The app is permanent, but the challenges and discounts will only run for three months. Therefore to ensure the app's longevity, we have come up with a Facebook community group, where parents can come together to connect with others and make friends.
They can also use the FB group to discuss what bonding activities they can do with their children and where are the best places they can bring their children to for activities. Parents may also rate, comment and review the attractions featured on the app.
It can also be used for general ratings and comments the parents have on the app itself, which we'll gather feedback to improve our app whenever necessary.
We chose Facebook as the platform for the group because most parents are already familiar with it and use it often to communicate and socialise with people they know.
Using something that our target group is already familiar with, instead of creating our forum within the app, can help to bring more popularity to our SingapoRediscovers app.
Creative and channel execution
Campaign mascot
A marketing campaign targeted at families with children necessitated a family-friendly and approachable aesthetic. Our team utilised the mascot of the Singapore Tourism Board, Merli.
Our campaign features Merli consistently throughout its promotional material and mobile app, building an emotional connection with our target audience while establishing a recognisable identity.
Merli would also invite our target audience to join in on the adventure of exploring Singapore, which links to our big idea. Moreover, this mascot was created by Singapore Tourism Board and thus, featuring it would allow us to align our campaign with their brand image.
Facebook ads and campaign microsite
We would begin the campaign by teasing the launch of the SingapoRediscovers mobile app, about a month before its launch. We'd publish two teaser ads on Facebook, which will run for the duration of March.
The ads contain a QR code that leads people to the campaign microsite, containing a countdown to the launch of the app. This will help create suspense and get people interested in what’s to come.
After launching the app, we'd publish three ads promoting the mobile app. We have deliberately made the headlines and phone bigger to make them the main focus of our ads.
Headlines such as 'find hidden gems' encourage families to have an adventure in Singapore. Additionally, the last ad with the headline, 'earn free vouchers' would be more of an incentive to encourage people to download our app.
YouTube ads
We would run two 15s ads on YouTube. The first two frames would serve as a hook in the first 5 seconds of our ad to capture our audience's attention.
We would use the insights that we have gathered to craft the storyline of the ads. The first advert, for instance, would depict the mother, who is stressed out, considering many factors when planning outings, such as the crowd level and her children's interests.
For our second YouTube ad, we appealed to our target audience by tapping on the misconception that Singapore has nothing else to offer, starting the video off with a relatable notion.
(You may see the storyboard sketches for these ads in the slide deck below.)
Out-of-home ads
For our bus shelter ads, we used rhetorical questions to better appeal to the struggles of our target audience. We have also leveraged on the strengths of out-of-home ads by using vibrant and eye-catching colours such as red and yellow to capture people’s attention.
Additionally, QR codes are also placed at eye level, which is a comfortable position for people to scan them to download our app, thus making it more convenient.
Bus shelter ads are the most noticeable out-of-home media channel, and we know that most parents are regular commuters of public transport.
Advertising at bus shelters would allow us to catch the attention of our target audience, raising awareness of our application.
We will be purchasing 100 of the 6-sheet posters from Clear Channel, located at heartland malls across Singapore (e.g. IMM, Causeway point, NEX, Star Vista). Clear Channel, in particular, has a reach of 76% with a frequency of 13.3x.
C O N T A C T
SMRT window sticker ads
This ad features a transparent phone screen as it allows commuters to better understand what our app offers, which is the variety of places families can explore, in a fun way.
This is similar to the constantly moving scenery outside the train. Moreover, this would also effectively pique one’s curiosity, thus raising awareness and interest in downloading our app.
SMRT is the second most noticeable out-of-home media in Singapore. With a whopping estimation of 3.3 million riders per day, many of our target audience and other commuters would get to see our advertisements.
Have questions?
Let's get in touch.
We chose window stickers inside the East West Line and North South Line trains, which are both overground.
These two lines are also the most used lines by locals, as there are many local businesses set up along the routes where they can reach many shopping malls, restaurants, food courts, and bars.
View the campaign slide deck here.
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© 2022 by Sean Tan. Supported by Singapore Polytechnic. All Rights Reserved
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