Tag: Singapore

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – How many times have you wished to get your favorite celebrities for a personal message? Probably too many, and probably one that remains unfulfilled. 

Regional event hiring platform Effro has just launched a new service arm Gueststar, which allows costumers to commission a media personality to produce unique video content for personal use. 

The company behind the new platform, Effro, provides a talent and services database, which helps event organizers easily find needed talents and services, such as emcees, performers, videographers, and appropriate venues, among others. With its new and one-of-a-kind service, consumers need not grapple to accomplish an often ‘special’ gift for special occasions – a personal video from a favorite celebrity. 

From birthday messages to wedding proposals, and from jokes to pep talk, costumers are able to engage their favorite local stars in Malaysia and Singapore.

Gueststar is a unique platform that aims to bring your favorite stars closer to you. Through digital means, time and space are no longer deterrents in creating a beautiful experience for your loved ones. With Gueststar, the distance between you and your favorite stars is brought closer

Adam Tan, Founder, Gueststar

Through the Gueststar platform, costumers can submit a request to the star of their choice and include pointers for the video’s content. Within 7 days of a submitted request, which is subject to approval, a video ranging from 20 seconds to 2 minutes will be produced and delivered.

On its celebrity roster, 50 stars are available on request. Singapore stars include Allan Wu, Andie Chen, Gurmit Singh, and Jason Godfrey among others; while for Malaysia stars, Gueststar has Adeline Tsen, Aishah, Atilia Haron, and Dina Nadzir, among others.

Clients can also request for special characters such as Batman and Cinderella, impersonators for Michael Jackson and Taylor Swift, and also magician Andrew Lee, who is a past finalist on Asia’s Got Talent and Britain Got Talent.

The costs of engagement range from RM30 to RM3500. While videos are produced mainly in English, users can request for other languages such as Bahasa Malaysia and Mandarin. 

Gueststar is now available for customers.

 

Singapore – Marketing insights startup InsightzClub has announced the launch of its new customer insights solutions which uses the passive-embedded technology.

The aforementioned technology focuses on gathering data based on actual consumer behavior rather than data collected from surveys or those based on user claims. 

InsightzClub will make available to customers two new solutions- a brand journey solution and an advertising effectiveness solution from early 2021 onwards.

InsightzClub’s passive-embedded technology utilizes a mix of image recognition, textual analytics, and behavioral signals to creative data analytics to arrive at metrics for brand journey and advertising effectiveness.

In a statement to MARKETECH APAC, InsightzClub’s co-founder and managing director Padmanabhan Ramaswamy said the newest innovation responds to a greater need to ‘understand behavior more accurately, as well as providing more confidence to marketers to make data driven decisions.’.

He also stated that InsightzClub envisions to ‘offer solutions to consumer brands who are more likely to be early entrants to use new disruptive solutions in the market to set a precedence for other consumer brands to follow across the region.”.

“We are very excited at the possibilities these two solutions could offer to change  the manner in which consumer insights are consumed. These two solutions have been developed at the back of extensive R&D by our technology team. We look forward to partnering with various brands on these solutions to drive data driven decisions,” Ramaswamy added.

Once available, the new solutions will be offered as subscriptions to customers. and can be accessed by downloading the InsightzClub mobile app on Google Play or Apple App Store.

Singapore – More consumers in the Asia-Pacific are doing their holiday shopping on their mobile devices, a new survey from mobile advertising AdColony shows.

Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand have the highest share of consumers that prefer to make purchases on their smartphones, as the majority of the country respondents clocked 94%, 93% and 91% respectively. 

AdColony-Online-Shopping-Philippines
AdColony infographic of mobile shopping in the Philippines

Respondents from Thailand (88%), Malaysia (86%), and the Philippines (84%) stated they prefer to shop in-app rather than use a mobile browser. On average, APAC shoppers showed 73% majority of showing the same consumer behavior. 

Purchases related to seeing an advertisement online are also relevant to the majority of APAC consumers, as Indonesia (92%), Malaysia and the Philippines (89%), and Singapore (85%) showed majority of such behavior.

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AdColony infographic of mobile shopping in Malaysia

In terms of what matters most for consumers’ shopping experience on mobile devices, an average of 52% said that easy payment process matters, as evident by the majority of respondents from Thailand (60%), Indonesia (59%), the Philippines (55%) and Malaysia (54%).

Japan (50%), Australia (53%) and Indonesia (56%) said that gifting this holiday should be done via shipping the gift directly to the receiver, while Malaysia (58%) and Thailand (52%) said that they will do the exchange gifting after the gift shipment has arrived.

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AdColony infographic of mobile shopping in Singapore

Meanwhile, online ordering, accompanied with concurrent home delivery still ranks as the top choice of shopping for today’s APAC consumers, garnering an average of 85% of all the respondents. Also, 55% of the respondents state that better deals are the prime reason why they shop online, evident by consumer behavior from Malaysia (70%), Singapore (62%) and Thailand (56%).

Singapore – Singapore dog food brand Furry’s Kitchen’s main value proposition is high quality, fresh, and human-grade dog food, and in its latest marketing stunt, it went out of its way to prove just that. 

In collaboration with creative agency Ogilvy, Furry’s Kitchen enlisted the culinary prowess of celebrity chef Justin Quek to conceptualize a 3-course degustation meal using none other than Furry’s Kitchen’s products, to be put to the ultimate taste and quality test with some of Singapore’s top food influencers. 

The results were just as Furry’s Kitchen expected – not knowing it was dog food, all of the invited influencers loved the dishes and gave their own favorable comments.

Food influencer Sihan Lee described the food as “velvety” in texture and even likened the experience to that of her grandma’s cooking. 

Another food blogger Alain, who goes by the social media name “Alainlicious,” although could not make out the ingredients, commented the food to have “a lot of surprises and a lot of layers.” 

Founder of Furry’s Kitchen Stephen Chua said, “This experiment challenges the perception that food for dogs tastes unpleasant and is made with undiscernible ingredients and preservatives unfit for human consumption.”

Furry’s Kitchen prides itself on delivering dog food that is without preservatives and additives where ingredients are said to be sourced from the same suppliers of restaurants in Singapore. 

Chua added, “Just like how we love to indulge in a delicious meal and feed ourselves and our loved ones with only the best ingredients possible, our furry friends deserve the same and can enjoy the same quality and freshness in their diet.”

Explaining further the experiment, Chef Quek said, “As with any social experiment, we had to keep certain variables under wraps to ensure the most unbiased results. We wanted to know if by removing the negative perception of dog food, we would discover that human-grade food made for dogs could taste both delicious and nutritious too.

“The dishes the food influencers enjoyed have all been taste-tested and quality-checked by me personally. You have my word that I only serve my guests food that I believe in, and food that meets my standards,” he added.

Furry’s Kitchen assured in a press release that participants of the experiment were informed thereafter, where participants understood that ingredients were sourced from the same Singapore Food Agency (SFA)-certified suppliers used by Singaporean restaurants.

Singapore – Singtel launched its annual festive tribute today, an uplifting short film depicting the staunch determination of seniors who refuse to let COVID-19 upend their lives.

Titled “Seniors go digital too!”, the film tells the stories of three seniors as they head back to “school” to pick up digital skills to help them stay connected and overcome the social distancing brought on by the pandemic.

The weekly attendance of seniors aunty Lilian, aunty Shirley, and uncle Andrew at Singtel’s digital clinics under its Digital Silvers program are documented in the film. Through Singtel staff volunteers, the seniors learn the use of smart devices, to surf the internet, stay in touch with loved ones online, and make cashless payments. 

Held at Senior Activity Centres (SACs) across the country, the Digital Silvers initiative is designed to foster digital inclusion and help ease the sense of isolation that the elderly have experienced as COVID curtailed peoples’ ability to socialize. 

It’s been a tough year for everyone, but the elderly are one of the more vulnerable groups affected by the pandemic. While most of us can easily access the plethora of online channels and apps for communication and entertainment, the older generation may not have the requisite digital skills to do so. This is what we’re trying to address through our digitalization initiative

Lian Pek, Vice President of Group Strategic Communications and Brand, Singtel

In the film, viewers see the conclusion of the seniors’ digital boot camp, with all of them finding a new sense of confidence and purpose: Aunty Lilian learns how to further her singing hobby and learn songs with the aid of apps on her device; Uncle Andrew learns how to use Zoom to stay in touch with friends and family, and Aunty Shirley becomes a “messaging expert”, connecting with her children as well as learning to use the contact tracing app TraceTogether.

Singtel shared that moving forward, the Digital Silvers program will see S$1M worth of assistance go towards transforming SACs into digital hubs to help more than 10,000 seniors build confidence in using digital devices and platforms. This involves tech upgrades including Wi-Fi connections, Singtel TV content, and tablets to facilitate virtual engagement as well as digital clinics and one-to-one tutorials run by Singtel staff volunteers. 

In addition, Singtel has also set aside priority queues for seniors at stores and hotlines so that they can be given digital guidance and served more expediently. 

Commenting on the program, Jeannie Ho, head of social enterprise NTUC Health’s senior cluster network said, “We’re very heartened to see many seniors from our Senior Activity Centres excitedly pick up new skills in the past month, as they realize that going digital is not as difficult as they imagined. This program and the digital workshops by Singtel have greatly empowered seniors to become so much more comfortable with using technology, enabling them to remain connected with their friends and loved ones amid the pandemic and especially during the festive season.”

Lian Pek added, “Even before COVID-19 and the pivot to online channels and tools, digitalization was already happening at breakneck pace, and for the elderly left on the wrong side of the digital divide, this can be very overwhelming. We believe that seniors can benefit from the digital revolution and that the process of picking up tech-related skills, no matter how basic, can also go a long way in helping their active aging.”

The short film is the final film in Singtel’s year-long brand campaign encouraging Singaporeans to keep their spirits up in the current climate through the feature of the lives of ordinary folks. This includes “This Is The Year”, Singtel’s annual National Day film which paid tribute to the Majulah spirit, and “Keeping The Spirit Of Hari Raya Alive” which documented how the Malay Community kept the spirit of Ramadan alive during the circuit breaker period.

The six-minute film will air on Singtel TV and on various social media channels from 3 to 25 December 2020.

Singapore – The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) has announced two new key partnerships: audiobook platform Audible and global multimedia company KC Global Media (Singapore), in upbringing the local talent of the country by digital transformation strategies.

The recent partnership is in part with IMDA’s larger plans of expanding the country’s media ecosystem that envisions a rise of innovative content and new opportunities for international collaboration.

Audible will be responsible for providing audio development and production training through its program “Audible Accelerator”. Furthermore, they will be responsible for finding and identifying local original stories that will be tested on Audible’s services globally.

“We are thrilled to work with IMDA and to tap into Singapore’s rich talent pool. We want nothing less than to find unique individuals to tell groundbreaking stories that could only be expressed through the power of human voice and create the next great audio series,” said Karen Appathurai Wiggins, vice president for content at Audible Inc. APAC.

She added, “It is a nation ripe with artistic talent but the audio and spoken-word category is still emerging. We hope to develop the capabilities of the artistic talent who have faced challenges as a result of the pandemic, and lay a foundation to new creative pathways and opportunities in the audio content field.”

On the other hand, KC Global Media Singapore will be responsible for collaborating with local media companies to conceptualize original scripts that have a regional appeal to countries such as Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, and Taiwan. 

“Technology advancement evolves the way consumers digest content and sets new market trends. Despite the challenging times amidst the recent climate, our brand thrives on pushing the boundaries of creativity and innovation. We are thrilled to partner with IMDA in rolling out initiatives targeting local talents to develop new formats, produce original content and make it available on all platforms,” said George Chien, president & CEO of KC Global Media Asia.

The new partnerships are launched under the umbrella of Capability Partnership Programme (CPP), which is expected to benefit 90 local media companies and over 700 media professionals in 2021 through job creation and opportunities for upskilling.

Singapore – The pandemic, which caused a drastic decline in retail sales, has created a new brand loyalty shift among Singaporean consumers causing for them to switch brands this year, new research from customer experience company Qualtrics show.

About 56% of the respondents have opted out for cheaper brands during the pandemic. Similarly, 57% of the respondents said that they are more likely to buy items on promotion, while half (51%) have bought different brands due to availability.

“While we know consumers will always value cost, quality, and convenience, findings from the Qualtrics study highlight the major extent to which people are actively seeking out alternatives. In fact, a third of respondents said they have tried at least one different brand since the pandemic began,” said Lisa Khatri, research and brand experience lead for Qualtrics in APJ.

The research also showed renewed consumer priorities among Singaporeans in terms of where to spend their money.

There has been a significant increase in purchases relating to takeaways and home delivery systems (50%), fresh food (42%), and packaged groceries (37%) as well as utility bills and service expenditure (47%), and cleaning products (35%). On the other hand, the majority of the consumers said that they’re spending less on luxury brands and products (60%), entertainment and travel (60%), eating out at restaurants (55%), and alcohol (48%).

Singapore – The Singapore arm of advertising company JCDecaux has launched its programmatic OOH media across various advertising channels, including bus advertising screens and airport advertising screens.

The company is launching first this strategy to 38 digital bus advertising screens. With these buses traveling along prime areas of Orchard Road the Central Business District, it is expected to generate 66 million impressions across the digital bus shelter inventory. 

Furthermore, the advertising inventory is connected to global demand-side platforms through supply-side platform VIOOH, which allows advertisers planning for offline+online campaigns within a single platform, and allowing them to manage their advertising inventory.

“Programmatic OOH is at the cusp of sea change in Singapore and the region. Many advertisers have expressed interest in our programmatic OOH offering and are keen to explore this to its fullest potential. We are thus delighted to work with VIOOH to launch our programmatic out-of-home media offer beginning with digital bus shelter screens. As we intensify the education journey and transition from traditional mode of buying and selling to a programmatic one, we will also be adding more diverse audiences to our offers by including a wider array of our digital OOH inventory,” said Evlyn Yang, managing director of JCDecaux Singapore.

The company will also roll out digital out-of-home (DOOH) across the Orchard Road and in the Central Business District, and in premium shopping malls namely ION Orchard, Funan, Raffles City, and Jewel, as well as Changi Airport by 2021.

Singapore – Leisure and lifestyle operator One Faber Group has renewed digital marketing Hashmeta’s contract as the operator’s marketing agency for record.

Aside from continuing their social and digital marketing duties for a second year, Hashmeta will help in creating brand awareness strategies for One Faber Group’s key attractions such as Singapore Cable Car and food and beverage (F&B) offerings such as Dusk Restaurant & Bar and Arbora Hilltop Garden & Bistro.

“We’re honored to continue our partnership with One Faber Group. 2020 has been challenging for the tourism industry but the synergy between our teams has helped tremendously in achieving great results in the past year. Naturally, we’re excited to build on this relationship and embark on the next chapter with One Faber Group,” said Monica Zhuang, creative director of Hashmeta.

This is not the first time Hashmeta won a contract renewal, having been appointed by Singapore-based cement/concrete supplier Pan-United as its official agency for social media marketing and website optimization in July 2020.

Singapore – As if the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) hasn’t made clear its strong intention to revive tourism, here comes a new initiative which seeks to provide a space for catalytic dialogue on tourism, not just to bring back to shape the country’s but the world’s as well.

Called SingapoReimagine, the platform aims to spark conversations, stories, and ideas to collectively shape the future of the country’s sector. The initiative will be kicked off by “Reimagine Travel – Global Conversations,” a series of forums on reactivating global travel. 

For a start, STB will be sharing its learnings on how the public and private sectors have come together to create new possibilities for the country’s visitors. As part of the forums, global partners will be invited to share knowledge and exchange ideas, with the first one in Singapore next year, before being hosted in other parts of the world.

Closer to home, STB will also roll out “Reimagine Travel in Singapore,” a series of engagements with passionate members of the local community and tourism partners to co-create ideas and spur the renewal of Singapore tourism. This complements the SingapoRediscovers domestic campaign, which encourages locals to rediscover and reconnect with Singapore’s hidden gems and experiences. Both of the forums will be launched in 2021. 

COVID-19 is the biggest crisis we have ever faced in travel and tourism. But it also offers us an opportunity to reset and revive our industries in ways that we never imagined were possible a year ago. The journey to reimagine travel has already started in Singapore, and we want to continue this journey with those whose voices matter – our community in Singapore, and our partners here and around the world. We look forward to co-creating ideas and strategies with all of them, to make travel better.

Keith Tan, chief executive at STB

STB said SingapoReimagine will also about creating a new standard for travel. The initiative will be rolling out the following sub-initiatives:

Reimagine Safety – STB has been working closely with industry partners to elevate health and safety measures based on new national standards so that future visitors can enjoy the city’s refreshed experiences with added peace of mind. Such initiatives include the SG Clean Quality mark, which requires tourism establishments to adhere to stringent levels of hygiene and sanitization as well as Safe Management Measures (SMMs).

Reimagine Technology – Technology will be the heart of these efforts. From the use of contactless technology and cleaning robots, to the contact tracing app TraceTogether and token, the world’s first national digital contact tracing tool, Singapore aims to make travel safer, yet seamless and efficient. Virtual experiences, hybrid meeting venues and events, and even robot baristas are now offered, enabling new ways to delight visitors without compromising on safety.

Reimagine City & Nature – Looking further ahead, Singapore aims to be the world’s most sustainable urban destination. That is why the country is investing in new products and pilots that take into account the needs of the community and the environment, such as the ambition to transform Singapore into a “City In Nature” over the next decade, developing the Jurong Lake District Tourism Development to be a world-class lifestyle destination, and reimagining the Mandai Precinct as a world-class eco-themed nature cluster, with the introduction of new wildlife attractions as well as eco-friendly accommodation offerings 

The SingapoReimagine initiative will also be used as a platform for stories. As travel gradually resumes, the story of these new experiences – for both leisure and MICE – will be told through SingapoReimagine. STB will be working with international and in-market media key influencers as well as content and trade partners to engage audiences in key markets to drive the anticipation for travel in Singapore.

The move is with the aim of further marketing Singapore as a safe MICE destination, in order to rebuild short to mid-term consideration of Singapore among MICE event planners.