Obviously the excitement around SG50 also provided an excellent marketing hook for opportunistic brands.

The SG50 logo has been omnipresent around Singapore, appearing on posters, planes, trains and FMCG products for several months.

For example, one might think that SG50 fishcakes were a step too far. But no, apparently not…

So with this in mind, here’s a roundup of interesting and ambitious marketing campaigns from SG50.

Singaporean marketers can also request a place at our upcoming Digital Cream roundtable event, or book onto one of our digital marketing training courses.

Singapore Airlines

Singapore Airlines was apparently the brand that social media users most associated with the SG50 celebrations.

It made the event the centrepiece for its marketing campaigns this year and has been offering customers a variety of SG50 special offers and travel ideas.

The airline also organised an art competition and a prize draw for free tickets.

To cap it all, one of the airline’s Airbus 380s was involved with the flypast during the National Day Parade.

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola has enjoyed global success with its ‘Share a Coke’ campaign, and the initiative arrived in Singapore just in time to coincide with SG50.

The campaign began in April and will run until the end of August, during which time Coke cans and bottles will feature various Singaporean nicknames and terms of endearment.

This includes ‘Auntie’, ‘Uncle’, ‘Chiongster’, ‘Bestie’, ‘Babe’ and ‘Bro’, and Singlish phrases such as ‘Gam Siah’ and ‘Relak Lah’.

In keeping with the Share a Coke activity in other markets, Coca-Cola will be hosting roadshows where people can get personalised cans and has also created a Facebook app so people can share virtual cans.

StarHub

Telco brand StarHub partnered with nine local charities to create a special arrangement of Home, a song associated with National Day.

It is intended to highlight the nation’s message of inclusiveness by featuring Singapore’s less privileged citizens.

The music video was published on StarHub’s YouTube (1.1m views so far) and Facebook pages, and was also shown on TV and in cinemas.

StarHub also offered customers free access to its TV channels in the run up to SG50 as a way of helping people to spend quality time together…

Tiger Beer

Tiger Beer’s SG50 activity involved a campaign that use quirky videos to charter the country’s ‘unofficial’ history.

It was supposed to be a lighthearted look at some of the cultural traditions that make the country unique.

Tiger seeded the campaign by having a member of the public discover what appeared to be an old wooden crate filled with vintage beer bottles, newspaper clippings and artefacts from the 1960s. These paved the way for the publication of two videos that gave fake accounts of the country’s history.

The first video suggested that chicken rice was invented in response to a plague of chickens and the second revealed that the Mexican Wave began life as the Kallang Wave.

The short versions of each video have both had more than 300,000 views.

Finally, Tiger also hosted an ‘unofficial official party’ involving famous bands, durian dodgeball and indoor fireworks.

Lego

To finish off, check out this brilliant campaign from Lego which invited children to build the city as it might look in 50 years.

Lego initially asked adults to envisage how Singapore will develop, with the resulting model featuring massive skyscrapers and office blocks.

A group of six-year-olds were then invited to rebuild the model. They reworked the city so there were more parks and offices were closer to people’s homes so they could spend more time with their families.

The stunt was part of Lego’s SG50 Rebuild Your Memories campaign, which also included various competitions and public Lego construction projects.