FairPrice celebrates the elections and Teacher's Day with clever trendjacking post

The polls have closed, and Singapore has now named its ninth president, Tharman Shanmugaratnam. However, the fun isn't over with supermarket chain FairPrice jumping on the bandwagon to put up a quick-thinking post aimed at targeting both the elections and Teachers' Day which falls on 11 September 2023 this year.  

Posted over the weekend, the Instagram picture featured a pineapple wearing a pair of glasses, a nod at Shanmugaratnam's campaign logo, and read, "To our pine-omenal 'Chers', thank you for being the core of our learning journey."

FairPrice added to the post with a caption that said that the first Friday of September will "always" be Teacher's Day for them. FairPrice was referencing the fact that this year, Teacher's Day was pushed from 1 September to 11 September to accommodate the presidential elections and polling. 

"Here's to our educators who add that extra 'zing' to learning and make our schooling years fruitful," it added before saying that they specially wanted to send well wishes to teachers who had to work over polling day. ⁣

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When MARKETING-INTERACTIVE reached out, FairPrice explained that the inspiration for the post was rather straightforward. A spokesperson from the supermarket chain said:

We wanted to tip our hat to the teachers whose big day had coincided with the Presidential Elections.

"Although Teacher's Day was postponed, our admiration for their dedication and commitment to nurturing the future leaders of Singapore remains as strong. We're glad that this resonated with the teaching community and that some teachers reached out to thank us for remembering them and saw the humour in the post too," said FairPrice.

The post comes at an opportune time as Singapore celebrates the landslide win of Shanmugaratnam at the presidential elections this weekend with sales and unique promotions. 

For example, Indian eatery Casuarina Curry, which is located at Upper Thomson Road, will be offering its pineapple and pineapple cheese prata at half price until 9 September in celebration of the win. 

Other establishments such as Soi 44 at Prinsep, took things a step further and encouraged patrons to come dressed as a pineapple so that they could claim a free 1.5-liter pineapple soju tower. 

In tandem, the sales of pineapples and pineapple-related products such as pineapple tarts and pineapple cheesecakes have also reportedly risen with cafe and cake shops seeing surge in sales and capitalising on it. For example, dessert cafe Ree and Mummy celebrated the presidential elections by offering a one for one promotion of its six-inch charred pineapple cheesecakes. 

Other brands hopped on the bandwagon with even more creative posts such as supermarket chain Giant which took to Facebook to post a Reel asking netizens who they would vote as Giant's president. Giant put forth three candidates, Avocado, Sio Peck Cai and Salmon and got them to make speeches in the Reel. Netizens were invited to decide the winner and to give their best responses for the chance to win shopping vouchers.

Drink company Fruce did a similar social media activation in tandem with the elections with an Instagram post encouraging people to vote for their favourite drink. 

"Voting is serious business... so come hop on down to your nearest Fruce outlets after voting for some relaxation and treat yourself to your favourite drinks," it said. It added that at Fruce, you can vote for all three of your favourite drinks. 

This is not the first time that Fairprice has cleverly made use of its uniquely Singaporean identity to reach out to customers. In 2021, the supermarket put a witty twist to Singapore street names in a Facebook post by combining the street name with a picture of an item it sells.

For example, it joined the street name "Admiralty" with the word "Admi" and an image of a roti prata packaging. It also integrated the beverage Qoo into the street name "Bencoolen" and Lay's into "Boon Lay". 

Netizens reacted positively to the post with many praising FairPrice's marketing team for its creativity. One netizen even added that he looks forward to seeing more refreshing content on the brand's social media platforms. At the same time, netizens also challenged FairPrice to come up with more witty adaptations of street names with some throwing out places such as Siglap, Seng Kang, Sembawang and Woodlands. FairPrice gamely accepted the challenge and responded to the comments with its own twist to the street names.