The Singapore Brand Story

STB destination brand YourSingapore launched in 2010 was designed to be customised to each individual and market segments e.g.

•     Australia: Get Lost and Find the Real Singapore
•     China: New Discoveries
•     India: The Holiday You Take Home with You
•     Indonesia and Malaysia: Only in Singapore, Right Now!
•     Philippines: Singapore - See where the World is Heading
•     Thailand: Experience Many Worlds in One Place
•     Vietnam: New Fun is Singapore Made

However, industry feedback was that the branding was not personal and the message was diluted across the various markets. 

A new marketing strategy was shared at the Tourism Industry Conference 2016, of Stories,Fans and Channels with the three Strategic Thrusts:

1.       Telling a Great Singapore Story

2.       Targetting the Right Fans

3.       Enhancing Our Delivery

Yee (2010) gave a history of the tourism destination branding over the years in his dissertation paper ‘Nation branding: A case study of Singapore’ from ‘Instant Asia’ in the 1960s-70s, ‘Surprising Singapore’ in 1985, ‘New Asia - Singapore’ in 1996, ‘Uniquely Singapore’ in 2004 to ‘Your Singapore’ in 2010. He suggested that the word ‘unique’ does not capture the essence of Singapore because every country is unique in their own ways. 

Henderson (2006) in her paper ‘Uniquely Singapore? A case study in destination branding’ discussed the Uniquely Singapore branding including its limitations. She discussed that the campaign was well-planned with active efforts to engage and involve the trade partners and local community.  However, the single destination brand may paint a uniform, bland, and over-general image.

More recently, STB shared its Destination Brand Story with Skift CMO Interviews on 3 May 2016 where Lynette Pang shared how data and real-time marketing are very relevant for engaging consumers.

Project LON #2: Perhaps it’s time to re-look the branding once again?