5 brands in SG that cut through the digital clutter with their campaigns

According to a 2021 study by Google, Temasek, and Bain & Company, Singapore has seen 500,000 new digital consumers since the beginning of the pandemic until the first half of 2021, 93% of whom still use digital services and 99% intend to continue using them going forward. Meanwhile, individuals who have used the services before the pandemic have consumed an average of 2.9 more services since the pandemic began. At the same time, 43% of merchants are expecting to increase usage of digital marketing tools in the next five years, according to the study. Close to three in 10 (28%) also said they will invest in digital analytics in the next five years. 

With companies going all out in their digital marketing strategies, the team at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE turned to our Marketing Excellence Awards Singapore 2021 results, judged by top-notch industry professions, to find out which companies are acing digital marketing.

Listed alphabetically, the top five winners below won over our independent judging panel through their smart and innovative use of digital. 

Disney+

With consumers now living in the golden era of content, Disney+ Singapore realised that consumers today are easily side-tracked and are spoilt for choices with new shows launching every other day. While the release of Marvel Studios' LOKI on Disney+ Singapore originally saw a great fanfare, other shows by competitors were also being launched at a similar timing stealing its limelight. With LOKI's impending finale, Disney+ knew it had to take back the limelight before the series came to an end. Disney+ needed an out of the box approach that would make LOKI the most talked about show on social media during its finale week and end the series on a high note. 

Disney+ Singapore knew it needed more than social posts to make the season finale of LOKI the talk of Singapore. To ensure LOKI had the lion’s share of conversation on social ahead of the show’s finale, it worked with Publicis Singapore to create an immersive experience that got fans excited. Disney+ and Publicis launched a campaign that would give fans a taste of what it would be like to be living time variance authority agent, monitoring and traversing intertwining timelines in the name of peace and order, akin to the show. It wanted fans to be involved in a game of hide-and-seek and search for Loki across space and time. Titled “Where in Time is LOKI”, the competition also doubled as an impactful way to introduce the premise of the show to audiences waiting to watch the series in full. 

Disney+ decided to engage Nathan Hartono, who is a fan of Marvel himself, to host the contest. Fans simply had to be the first five to scan the right QR codes and find Loki among hundreds of social posts Across Disney+ SG’s social accounts.   Disney+ decided to hide the QR codes that held clues to Loki’s whereabouts in backdated posts, comments sections and YouTube mastheads, as well as on Nathan Hartono’s own social channels. Depending on which QR code fans had scanned, audiences would be challenged to find Loki. The first five fans to send Disney+ the screenshot of the codeword would also stand a chance to win exclusive merchandise. Once the five prizes were redeemed, the winning QR codes were updated with “You just missed him!” messages.

Disney+ also ensured constant engagement for the show’s fans and followers. When it received comments that the second round of QR codes were hard to find, Disney+ immediately posted hints on where to find them. Disney+ hid the QR codes in the week leading up to the campaign launch. It also created a contest teaser video on its social media platforms. Within an hour of the contest launch, all QR codes were discovered by eagle-eyed fans. Disney+ then repeated the cycle the next day, with a fresh batch of QR codes for fans to look out for.  

McDonald's Singapore

Since 2019, McDonald’s has collaborated with Hershey’s for an annual takeover of its dessert range to offer consumers a chance to indulge in chocolate cravings. Past marketing efforts for McDonald’s Hershey’s typically involved on-ground activations to bring feel-good moments associating chocolate with life, and to drive product excitement. However, given government regulations and reduced out-of-home movement, such channels were not as useful as compared to before. As such, McDonald's needed to find a way to deliver the feel-good promise of its Hershey’s desserts and achieve aggressive sales targets, as well as convince consumers to order desserts via new methods, in a fiercely competitive environment.

McDonald's found that music streaming increased by 19% over the pandemic. Coupled with its insights that music was helping Singaporeans, especially Millennials, get through the lows and highs of the pandemic, the fast-food chain launched its "Go on a Chocolicious Escape with Feel-Good Tunes and Treats" campaign. The campaign revolved around a Spotify playlist that featured locally, feel-good songs, songs trending in real-time, and popular songs that paid homage to the product through treat-inspired titles. 

Whilst the curated mood booster playlist was the core element of this digital campaign, the campaign also consisted of several strategic media levers to drive discoverability of this playlist, as well as feature the range of McDonald’s Hershey’s treats. It also took Spotify homepage, making it deliciously chocolate-themed, complete with luscious dripping chocolate to drive cravings. 

Furthermore, to drive discoverability over the six-week-long campaign, McDonald's deployed audio ads to reach listeners that were tuning in to other playlists on Spotify and to further amplify visibility beyond the streaming platform. In addition, Spotify's scannable tags were utilised across paid media and owned media to drive consumers online to the playlist and to sustain awareness over the campaign period. Lastly, to drive relevancy, McDonald's used data to identify those that would most likely need a mood boost and direct them to the playlist.

All of its efforts saw the playlist achieve the "Top Branded Playlist of the Year" in Singapore, total streams for the mood booster playlist were 31 times higher than the average playlist and achieved 10 times the average playlist followers in 2020. It was also repeated 28 times higher than the average 2020 playlist in Singapore, indicative of user retention and the positively addictive quality of songs. 

National Council of Social Service

To understand the quality of life for people with mental health conditions, the National Council of Social Service (NCSS) surveyed the nation which saw three in four people with mental health conditions saying that they do not seek help for their condition, while half stated that they would not even live near someone with mental health issues.

To encourage help-seeking behaviours, NCSS sought to provide youths with a means to find the right help saliently without the fear of being judged for it. As such, it launched Belle, a mental health Helpbot that alleviates the daunting task of searching for help via traditional search engines or face-to-face queries. Belle was first launched with an accompanying omnichannel paid media burst targeted at Singaporean youth aged 18 to 35 years old, as well as parents, employers and caregivers aged 35 to 59 years old, between 24 September to 5 Dec 2019.

Awareness of Belle was then sustained from January to August 2020 via scheduled social posts on its former campaign, Beyond The Label, social pages, as well as earned amplification through national press mentions and promoted by other mental health related public sector partners such as Institute of Mental Health (IMH). This was further supported by a third paid media burst from 14 September to 11 November 2020, to respond to heightened calls for mental health support as Singaporeans coped with mental health stressors during the pandemic.

Since its launch, Belle has routed thousands of previously unreachable requests monthly to different helplines, centres, programmes, and services. The 2020 Support Phase of the campaign also encouraged PMHCs to find and accept help for their conditions. Furthermore, NCSS' third paid media burst far exceeded its paid media and PR KPIs, off a media budget of just under SG$562,000, which is far lower than most nationwide campaigns.

Pants Bear

The COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with changes to YouTube’s “Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)” regulations, saw Pants Bear having to think out of the box to launch its new edutainment show of the same name. Pants Bear premiered on YouTube in 2020 after more than a year of planning and preparation. The show had managed to gain a steady following on YouTube, across several markets, including Singapore, Japan, Malaysia and Australia. However, despite garnering more than a million views and over 3,000 subscribers on YouTube, it was nowhere near enough to break through the clutter of edutainment brands. 

From its studies, Pants Bear knew that it had a global resonance in entertainment, with a global net sentiment being 80% positive across audience groups. The show and its characters also have a cute element which broke beyond the parent and child segment, and was even favoured by teenagers in Japan and the US. With a limited budget, it decided to bank on a mobile and messenger strategy as according to Facebook Analytics, more than 100 billion messages are sent every day on messenger platforms, with 63% of people across generations preferring to message over having to email or call. 

To maximise the show’s visibility, Pants Bear worked with Industria to tap on the increasing demand for stickers and GIFs in chats by launching profiles on GIF platform GIPHY , and sticker platform Tenor, which was met with resounding success. Pants Bear set up profiles for the show on GIPHY and Tenor while simultaneously creating sticker packs, GIFs and even short GIF stories using the show’s existing animation library – filled with character designs and reactions.  The profiles went live once Pants Bear had more than a 100 stickers ready. To get the GIFs trending, and in the public eye, the company used keyword optimisation. Similarly, tagging was used to get relevant stickers in the hands of people who wanted to use them most. Research on current trends and popular GIFs were conducted regularly to ensure Pants Bear would be within the first five results for any given searches, “incepting” their communications. 

In just 24 hours, one Pants Bear sticker had garnered more than 30 million views overnight. Another 24 hours later, a different sticker was trending among consumers – from Singapore to Stockholm. Meanwhile, Pants Bear gifs had been trending on GIPHY for days, with over 64 million views. In less than two weeks, the show’s GIPHY channel had over 160 million views, crossing every local and even global brand accounts in visibility; with even more GIPHY views than the official Pokémon channel. 

By early January 2021, the brand had garnered a whopping 318.8 million views with seven stickers making the global top five, not only on GIPHY, but on Instagram story filters as well, where Pants Bear stickers were actively used to enhance Instagram Stories. Leading into March 2021, Pants Bear’s official GIPHY account passed the two billion views mark, with Tenor hitting over one million lifetime shares. The monetary value of the campaign alone due to the views was equivalent to US$2 million in media spend.

Yeo Hiap Seng

The volatile dining regulations impacted Yeo's daily on-ground engagement with the consumers and the decrease in brand presence in the daily consumer journey and a fixated consumers’ perception of the brand as a festive drink, further lower the top-of-mind awareness of the brand. With all of these factors in play, Yes's saw an effect on the instore growth.

Quickly the brand decided to create three new product launches with variants on its Chrysanthemum Tea in Less Sugar, No Sugar and with Wolfberry, intending to expand current users’ basket size and recruit new users. However, the sales contribution of the new product launches was not able to reach its full potential due to limited instore activation opportunities.

When National Day was approaching in Singapore in 2021, Yeo’s wanted to ride out of the disruption with it’s elevated social footprint and their learnings its positive association the year before. After analysing its challenges, Yeo's grouped and mapped out two main solutions: Reinforcing a new consumption occasion and strengthening the relatability with the target audience.

It then came up with an awareness strategy to reinforce a new habit and an engagement strategy to resonate with the target audience. Additionally, in light of the pandemic, Yeo's research shows that Singaporeans are more empathetic to social causes, and group behaviour is observed to trigger empathy into action; supporting the local community. On the other hand, with the government pushing the #SGUnited narrative this NDP, many Singaporeans have shown support for local businesses and frontline workers. There is a common motivation underlying between the consumers, NDP and the brand - to celebrate goodness to feel good.

To that end, Yeo’s created two special edition cans with its newly launched Chrysanthemum Tea variant. One of them was an exclusive can design with FairPrice to give thanks to the #UnsungHeroes, allowing consumers to pen down their encouragement at the back of the can and share on social media. The campaign also included a microsite to garner buzz and talkabililty. Yeo's also tapped on KOLs to further amplify the campaign.  Yeo's also launched Yeo’s NDP Mash-up, an audio mash-up with four popular NDP patriotic songs, which was conducted in collaboration with local musicians via Instagram live. The mash-up was then integrated into an AR filter to drive engagements with audience digitally, encouraging and enabling them to share the feel good emotions. . 

The campaign received more that 13 million impressions with a 15% average engagement rate.

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