Singapore’s battered tourism economy needed a local boost with the country’s borders still closed a year into the Covid-19 pandemic. To incentivise Singaporeans, the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) issued S$100 tourism dollars that can be used at various attractions. 

But this is a hard sell for a tiny country where domestic tourism is a foreign concept. Singaporeans believe they already know all about their own backyard, so what else can they possibly do? 

Our Approach

We needed to be real and focus on what truly matters to Singaporeans. So we spoke directly to our vacation-deprived fellow Singaporeans by answering the top question on their minds after spending months in the pandemic-induced lockdown: “How To Not Waste Your Annual Leave?”

We launched a massive multi-format content campaign in all four languages to reach and engage our wide-ranging audience. This was anchored on an original series of videos, with 3 episodes in English and 3 in Chinese, each featuring different content. Through the episodes, our two hosts are invited by their friends to get into a passion/hobby/activity that their friend really enjoys. This way, they get to experience Singapore through fresh eyes. 

The Results 

Our strategy was highly effective and we achieved 157% of our campaign targets. Our audience were engaged with our content and spent over 23,000 hours with our content on our digital platforms alone – that’s excluding their time spent on our social media platforms.

“How To Not Waste Your Annual Leave” is a bona fide success, eventually contributing to around 1.9 million Singaporeans using their vouchers and close to $300 million in transactions recorded.