A Conversation With Jonathan Loh, Area Director, Northern & Western Europe, Singapore Tourism Board

1.       So, how long have you been in London?

I’ve been working here for three years now, and I will soon be de-posted to Singapore end of July to join the Admin and Estate Department in STB. Prior to this posting, I spent three years in Tianjian, China with Keppel Land working on commercial and industry property doing business development work in the Tianjin Eco City.

2.       What is 1 thing you like most about London/ Europe?

I would say it is the cultural diversity in Europe with its different cultures.  Every country in Europe is so rich in culture and history.

3.       What is 1 thing you think Singapore can learn from Europe?

London is a hub for Europe, and similarly Singapore can be a hub for South-east Asia.  Tourists who come to Europe must visit London and from here, they will go to Paris etc.  In the same way, SEA is made up of different countries with their own unique cultures such as Thailand or Angkor Wat in Cambodia.  Singapore can be this hub in Asia so that tourists who want to come to Asia must visit Singapore, and from here, venture out to explore other cities. It helps that our Singapore Airlines and Changi Airport are well-renowned, so tourists want to fly Singapore Airlines and land in Changi Airport, visit Singapore, and the other cities in Asia.

We have seen some success in our partnerships with the travel industry here and were hoping to hit or even exceed the half million mark for visitor arrivals from UK. Unfortunately with Brexit now the economy is unstable so Britons may be more cautious when deciding to travel overseas. However, we will continue what we have been doing, to build mindshare in the market so that Singapore will be the destination they think of when they think of travelling.

Thank you, Jonathan.

Brands And Social Purpose: Engaging Singapore's Millennials

Flamingo Group recently hosted a Culture Breakfast series, SG51: Who cares? in June 2016 and shared their research findings which showed that over half of 16-25 year olds wanted a career that can make a social difference, and not just for making money.  

Elly Chiu, associate director of insight and strategy consultancy Flamingo Group said that, "From having material possessions, they are moving towards valuing people and relationships. They also value personal satisfaction and happiness." Other speakers included her fellow Flamingo associate director Regina Tan, The Thought Collective co-founder and director Tong Yee and Logue founder Jean Qingwen Loo.

There are three types of brand purpose behaviour when it comes to social purpose:

• The Cheerleader: Brands that fall into this category motivate and encourage a particular way of living.
• The Community Worker: These brands work with on-ground facilitation with the community, translating tangible actions into visible and immediate impact.
• The Change Maker: Brands that play this role challenge the status quo and provoke societal debates.

There are three do’s and don'ts for brands in social purpose among Singapore's youth:

Don't –

• Use the rhetoric of change or resort to lazy sloganism;
• Expect people to willingly explore new paths;
• Put up symbolic acts that present no enrichment value, or are simply dull and not interesting.

Do –

• Link brand purpose clearly to tangible and visible outcomes;
• Provide a springboard and safety net to guide young Singaporean millennials and aid them in getting started;
• Offer a variety of valuable experiences that can help them gain new skills to add to their resume of life.

Check out the Flamingo Group’s Lens on London.

Also, How to Market Effectively to Millennials lists the potential for success strategies:

1.       Communicate a higher brand purpose

2.       Be authentic and transparent

3.       Leverage digital content smartly

4.       Recognize loyalty with experiences and exclusive access

5.       Reflect diversity beyond traditional multicultural casting

Success Principle # 3 – Leverage digital content and social media smartly. 

1.       Give the consumers a degree of control. To operate effectively, brands must relinquish some of the control they have held for so many years. They have to let the consumer set the terms for ongoing conversation – how often, how deep, etc.

2.       Let them find you / come to you. Millennial consumers want to ensure that nothing alters their social media experience or turns it into something its' not "supposed to be", and they want to preserve the sense of discovery that makes social media fun.

3.       Be interesting. Companies need to move away from the traditional content model and use the consumer as the content creator. Ultimately, content that entertains – or information that is presented in a unique way – works best.

4.       Listen first, then talk – create a dialogue. Millennials want dialogue – a conversation – where brands listen to what they have to say rather than just pushing their messages without taking into account what consumers think, feel and want.

5.       Be relevant. Millennial consumers want to see content that relates to their lives, their interests, their desires, and their needs. It means making every post, link or article, personally relevant and meaning to each individual.

6.       Be open and honest. Millennials want brands to be candid. They don't trust and respect brands that do not post "the good and the bad" on their fan pages. They expect an "open book" approach where brands tell consumers who they are, what they expect/want from them, and what exactly they're offering.

7.       Be accountable and humanize. Brands often suffer in social media because they don't have anyone that answers to the consumer. It is so important for brands to find ways to humanize themselves – and the best way is to have real people who speak on behalf of the brand in social media.

8.       Talk like a friend, not a corporate entity. Millennials want brands to communicate in simple, casual language that is conversational. Don't try to sell, but rather talk in a friendly, casual way about finding ways to meet the needs of the consumer.

9.       Let the consumer talk for you. The best-case scenario for brands is that Millennial consumers take the initiative and advocate for a brand. For this to happen, brands must create the opportunity for consumers to spread the word.

10.     Offer something of value. Millennials are far more likely to respond to brands that offer them something real and tangible, preferably without something in return.

Source: WARC

The Eden Project – The Inspiration Behind Gardens By The Bay

A chat with Ms Wong Yoon Fong, Assistant Director Sales & Marketing from Gardens by the Bay at the STB Trade Engagement Session in London revealed that Gardens was inspired by the Eden Project in Cornwall, UK.

The Eden Project is an educational charity, connecting one another with the living world and exploring how we can work towards a better tomorrow.  A full price adult ticket costs £25 with a 10% discount for booking online, as well as a green travel 16% discount if you walk, cycle or take public transport to Eden.

There are resources, courses and learning opportunities, you can even take an Eden degree (in Horticulture, Event Management or Contemporary Storytelling and Performance) awarded by Plymouth University, or a MSc in Sustainability with Anglia Ruskin University.  You can also get involved by becoming a community champion.

Watch the Eden Story on ‘why we built this place’.

picture from Eden Project

Source: http://www.edenproject.com/

Web In Travel (WIT) Europe 2016

WIT Europe was held for the first time in Europe in London on 30 June 2016 in Tate Modern, with STB as the presenting partner. A cocktail session was held in the evening at Town Hall Hotel (by Loh Lik Peng/ Unlisted Collection) hosted by Momondo Group.

The theme for WIT Europe was Reboot Asia, and it shares insights into how companies in Europe can work their way into Asia.  Speakers were aplenty including panel discussions with Priceline, Sabre, AccorHotels, Circos Brand Karma, and Venture Republic (Japan), TideSquare (Korea), GetYourGuide (China), and CarTrawler, Skyscanner; state of the market reports from China, Japan, South Korea; spotlights on China, low cost carriers, Contiki Holidays; destination case studies from Singapore, Australia; coffee chats with Momondo Group, Unlisted Collection; and ending with the signature great WIT debate on the proposition: Europe is finished, the future belongs to Asia. 

It was an intensive enriching session, facilitated mostly by the WIT Founder and Managing Director Yeoh Siew Hoon, as well as others.

Morris Sim, CEO & Co-founder of Circos Brand Karma shared the new trends including Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality.  Watch the Tilt Brush by Google and Whale by Magic Leap videos which can be used to complement classroom learning. 

Hugo Burge, CEO of Momondo Group shared its company’s vision Let’s Open Our World with The DNA Journey video to show how we are more connected than we think.

STB and Thomas Cook also shared their partnership to increase visitor days of its visitors from UK to Singapore from the average of 3.5 to 5 days, but exceeded its target to reach 7 days with the Get Into Singapore campaign.

presentation by Tan Yen Nee, STB

coffee with Loh Lik Peng, Unlisted Collection

the Great WIT Debate

Tree 2010 by Ai Weiwei in Tate Modern

Town Hall Hotel

Special Interest Tourism/ New Tour Business Products

The 10 best special interest holidays for 2016 according to The Telegraph:

· Steam dreams – participate in the Festival of Steam in the Somme with trains, tractors, buses, steamrollers and steam-powered saw-mills.

· Ballroom and Latin American dancing in the Tenerife - daily dance tuition with experts who are on hand to teach the steps, hold, posture, footwork and professional techniques.

· Choral singing in Andalusia – with artistic director of the BBC National Chorus of Wales as the singing tutor.

· Cranes and Champagne – bird-watching with some extra fizz.

· Holland in bloom river cruise – a visit to Keukenhof Gardens and a gardening expert to talk about the best new varieties and the garden’s history in Hortus Bulborum.

· Kumbh Mela in India – the festival rotates around four different holy sites in Haridwar, Allahabad, Nashik and Ujjain.

· Painting in Croatia – painting tuition with excursions by boat to several islands.

· Morocco Sketchbook – takes in Marrakesh, mountains and the coastlines, and help you develop your drawing skills.

· Blossoms in Japan – a botanical journey from the capital Tokyo to the imperial city of Kyoto during either the Spring Peony Festival or the Autumn Chrysanthemum Festival, and also includes an Ikebana class to learn the Japanese art of flower-arranging.

· Fishing in Northern Argentina – a fishing and conservation tour, and opportunities for horse-riding and bird-watching with expert insights from scientists.

Shakespeare Aloud at Stratford-upon-Avon:

Brexit - Regrexit

Brexit has led to a fall in the pound (at one stage 10% to its lowest since 1985), which means that buying goods or services (including holidays) from other countries will become more expensive for Britons (“How will Brexit affect your finances?”, BBC).  So a summer holiday will cost more (“What does Brexit mean for you? Holidays, homes, jobs”, The Guardian).  But if you are booking a trip to the UK, then the drop of the pound may make a trip to London more cost effective than normal (“What Brexit means for you, and your financial plan”, Huffington Post). 

Singapore’s tourism arrivals from UK will be affected, for sure. 

outside 10 downing street

A Case Study Of Tourism Case Studies

• GREAT Britain Campaign: Creating impact for Britain around the world

The Task: The GREAT Britain campaign is the Government’s most ambitious international marketing campaign launched in 2012 to stimulate jobs and growth, to encourage the world to visit, study and do business with the UK. 

The Problem: There was no consistent approach to country branding or promoting Britain overseas. Instead Government organisations used their own brands, logos, and names. There was also little coordination between tourism, trade, and investment, and educational organisations when promoting the UK overseas. 

The Solution: Define the brand principles, then design the brand identity, assets and guidelines, with a great degree of organisation, control and the production of high-quality imagery, to successfully motivate and align stakeholders from 17 Government departments and 350+ private and public partnerships in 144 markets around the world. GREAT delivery partners use the freely available brand assets and guidelines as the basis for their marketing activities, which currently run at between 80-100 initiatives per month around the world.  

The Result: A comprehensive, flexible, easy-to-use and easily recognisable framework which enables communication of the UK’s key attributes across dozens of different communication applications e.g. outdoor advertising, TV, exhibition and events, social media, PR etc.

• Visit Britain: Great Chinese names for Great Britain

The Problem:  Chinese tourists spend more than any other country’s, due to its growing affluence. However the UK was missing out on this lucrative market amid perceptions that it was not as friendly as other parts of Europe. 

The Solution: Visit Britain addressed this with a campaign that invited Chinese people to come up with names for 100 British attractions that had never officially been translated into Chinese. 

The Result: Millions of people watched an associated video and visited the campaign online, and 13,000 new names were submitted.  Some of these names have since been adopted by Google Maps. Chinese tourism to the UK increased by 27% during the campaign.

• British Airways North America: Visit Mum

The Problem: How do you get more people to fly on British Airways from North America? UK bound traffic was not forecast to grow at a significant rate and the competition was getting tougher.  Research showed British Airways that it’s never been about a flight, but about making the effort to take the journey. 

The Solution: Get mum to deliver a message of nostalgia, memories and a visceral longing to return home.  

The Result: British Airways was able to engage North American Indian expats in a relevant, emotional and completely original way.

• MasterCard: The Priceless Engine

The Problem: To stand out and to add value to its consumers, but the information about the consumers themselves is guarded by the banks who issue the cards. MasterCard did not have the means to interpret all the data and simply pushed more and more irrelevant merchant offers and content to consumers through banner ads, social media, pop-ups etc. 

The Solution: MasterCard launched ‘The Priceless Engine’, a combination of people, process and more than 20 technology platforms to crunch data, track trends and insights, and study social media conversations as they happen. It turns big data into usable data and to deliver the right offers and messages to the right people at the right time. 

The Result: The Priceless Engine was put to work to power MasterCard’s ‘New Year’s Eve’ campaign, featuring Hugh Jackman, across the region. His involvement created an emotional spark with consumers through the local MasterCard Facebook pages, allowing MasterCard to connect to consumers’ hearts. It encouraged people to share who they would want to spend their New Year’s Eve with and why, sharing elaborate and emotional stories, and providing MasterCard with valuable data and insights to optimise the campaign further.  Those insights were then used to provide customers with Priceless Surprises and Priceless Experiences they truly cared about. Subsequently, these Priceless Moments then became a catalyst for even more engagement, allowing MasterCard to get even richer insights. 

Source: WARC