#MarketingEventsAwards 2020 highlight: POSB banks on AR tech to enhance CNY experience

As a part of Singapore’s Chinese New Year festivities, the River Hongbao was launched in 1987 and has since evolved to become a major highlight of the Singapore calendar, attracting one million participants every year.

It is organised by the Singapore Federation of Chinese Clan Associations, Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Singapore Press Holdings’ Chinese Media Group, Singapore Tourism Board and People's Association

Being the local bank with the longest history in Singapore (143 years), and as a key part of the social fabric, POSB saw the event as a great avenue to drive engagement for the community of Singapore. This allowed the bank to take home the gold for best digital integration and silver for best community event.

As such the team took home the gold in Best Digital Integration and silver for Best Community Event.

Challenge

The team aimed to bring new marketing technologies to a traditional event while keeping much-loved traditions alive.

The vision was to create an immersive experience for visitors with integration of technology – amplify and enhance the on-ground experience through appropriate and creative use of technology to achieve engagement and drive business objectives.

Strategy

The key objectives of this collaboration included creating an immersive engagement experience with POSB’s target audience  such as families - especially the parents and kids segment, through a digital and virtual consumer journey during the festive period, and creating positive brand affinity with POSB as a community bank - “Neighbours First, Bankers Second”.

For River Hongbao 2020, POSB sought to create new and fun ways for families and friends to celebrate Chinese New Year where visitors could immerse themselves in a world with the 12 Chinese zodiac animals, brought to life in a virtual environment. The team also wanted raise awareness of the AR technology behind QR gifting. 

It also aimed to get visitors interacting with POSB’s very own Smiley God of Fortune, and receive an “angbao” (red packet) of good blessings for the new year.

Execution

1. RHB’s First Virtual Game - #HuntYourZodiac

From 23 to 27 January 2020, The Float @ Marina Bay transformed into a virtual playground for RHB visitors. Using their mobile devices, visitors embarked on a virtual hunt to “catch” the 12 Chinese zodiac animals hidden around the premises, in exchange for prizes.

This immersive virtual game integrated elements of augmented reality to enable players to search for, hunt and have chance encounters with the 12 Chinese zodiac animals.

2. Evolution of Red Packets

AR technology within the exhibition area of the RHB 2020, POSB showcased the digital QR Gift solution using AR technology, embedded in the image of “Smiley”, POSB’s mascot. Visitors embarked on an interactive journey with Smiley in augmented reality by simply scanning POSB Smiley images across the event grounds and on collaterals they received.

3. God of fortune Huat hour in Chinese culture

The God of Fortune is a symbol of luck, wealth and prosperity. POSB’s very own Smiley God of Fortune appeared at an auspicious (or "huat" ) hour every day at the RHB 2020 to give away angbao to visitors.

The digital media accompanying the initiatives were done to create mass awareness and social buzz for River Hong Bao 2020 and drive visitors to key activities. The team needed to drive mass awareness and maximise customer engagement within a week. It decided to evaluate available first and third party data signals available and leverage Facebook’s Core audiences, custom audiences and affinity to create its core audience for POSB. A series of different creatives were used to drive awareness and site landing to POSB’s campaign page where it housed information of the event and details of the game.

In order to achieve a mass reach within a short time period and ensure the ideal ad exposure, the team selected FB reach and frequency buy. This was also supplemented using additional targeting line and family related data signals from APEX DSP. It also made use of remarketing to expose our audience to other key event highlights after consumers landed on the site.

To ensure maximum discovery, the team created SEM ad groups for branded and general terms related to the RHB campaign. Generic and RHB related keywords were bought as branded terms.

Overall, search played an important role in enabling discovery of the campaign. High impact buys were key in generating mass awareness and well-known local publications, such as those under the stable of Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), were chosen to help supplement high awareness for our campaign Lastly, Programmatic buys were leveraged and planned synergistically with the other channels in mind, as a cost-effective measure to maximise reach.

Results

Over a short 10-day campaign, the team reached more than 2.5 million unique users on Facebook and drove over 33,000 page landings to the POSB RHB landing page.

The brand saw over 1200% additional engagements on Facebook where it’s timely launch on the first day of Chinese New Year drove momentum leading it to garner 32,962 engagements.

Creative copy also contributed to its success – the post’s “Wishing everyone a prosperous and abundant Chinese New Year” greeting was perfectly in line with the festive mood on the day of its launch. By targeting festival- and CNY-specific third party audiences, the team drove cost efficiency per landing. Overall, the virtual #HuntYour Zodiac Virtual Game saw over 18,000 players attempt to play the game with over 3,000 winning a prize God of Fortune Huat Hour. More than 5,000 people the event over three days.