Why is this work relevant for PR?

SwedCham's purpose is to promote exchanges between Swedish and Singaporean companies. With this campaign, we generated unexpected partnerships between widely different businesses. Through driving collaboration and conversations, we showcased how with an open mindset, we can power through crisis together. SESG's outreach resulted in in-depth stories in Singapore’s biggest news and business press, an earned media reach of 17,6 million people and a mention from the Prime Minister himself - who tweeted his support for the campaign. This was achieved with zero PR investment, leveraging instead our honest and unexpected message and in-depth stories of partnerships.

Background

SMEs - or micro businesses - account for 99% of Singapore’s companies, employ 70% of Singaporeans, and contribute to nearly half of the country’s GDP. But in 2020, due to Covid-19, many suffered greatly. Decreased consumer consumption led to an 50% decrease in revenue for some micro businesses. The Swedish Chamber of Commerce in Singapore (SwedCham) represents and promotes Swedish companies in Singapore, many of them who have been in the country for decades. SwedCham’s role is to facilitate the exchange of views and information between Swedish and Singaporean companies. During the pandemic, SwedCham wanted to help their home away from home, while also supporting its member companies. It was this context that spawned the SESG (Sweden Singapore) Initiative, aiming to generate business impact through unexpected partnership and spread a message of hope. Our task was to craft the creative idea, narrative and activation plan to spread this message.

Describe the creative idea (20% of vote)

The SESG Initiative is built on Swedish values of collaboration. Great things can be achieved when working together, exchanging experiences and knowledge. Our idea was to pair a broad range of local micro businesses, run by entrepreneurs from different ethnicities, religions, languages and walks of life - with Swedish multinational corporations, for business collaboration. It kicked off with a large-scale OOH campaign, where the local companies appeared on their very own billboards and buses nationwide. This was designed to surprise and delight people across Singapore - imagine seeing your favourite hawker uncle on the side of a bus downtown! We focused on the individuals behind the small businesses, showing faces not normally seen in these spaces. OOH was just the start. Each duo also collaborated on new business initiatives of their choice - ranging from creating new dishes at hawker-stalls to sustainability campaigns for fashion brands, growing the Initiative further.

Describe the PR strategy (30% of vote)

During the pandemic, debates raged about the role of foreign influence in Singapore, whether it was beneficial or harmful to the nation. It was important that our message not come across as ‘foreign aid’, but one of mutual exchange. We decided to align with government organizations to help ‘legitimize’ our Initiative in the eyes of the public. We secured support from Enterprise Singapore, and the National Environment Agency which gave us a broader platform. We wanted to inspire the public, and businesses, of the possibilities when we come together instead of keeping to ourselves. By standing together, we can weather any crisis. We created a film that explained the initiative, our intent and the partnership stories. These emotional, personal tales of collaboration and business innovation became our core campaign asset for digital and social, alongside the OOH visuals.

Describe the PR execution (20% of vote)

Our one-month long outreach plan was executed with zero PR investment - no paid partnerships or sponsored posts. Our approach was to first announce the overall initiative, and then dive deeper into the individual partners’ stories, thus maximizing all aspects of the Initiative. We first targeted and secured an Exclusive with leading national title Straits Times to introduce SESG. This was followed by outreach to over 60 titles across news and business and verticals within each of our partner companies business areas (food, fashion, tech, lifestyle…); with targeted story angles for maximum relevance. We leveraged the social media platforms of the participants, by having them follow our approach: first sharing the SESG film, followed by emotional stories of their personal experiences, sparking further conversations, all under #StandTogetherSESG. We also pitched the story to Government Ministers and senior Swedish officials in Singapore, including the Ambassador.

List the results (30% of vote)

The campaign garnered 18 stories across leading publications, including in-depth coverage in Singapore’s top daily - Straits Times; top business publication - Business Times; and leading Tamil title - Mediacorp Tamil News. 18 hours into the campaign, Prime Minister Lee himself took notice and celebrated SESG on both his Twitter and Linkedin. Other prominent figures including Minister Chan Chun Sing shared the campaign on social, alongside EDB, ESG and NEA. The message delivery has been on point - top word associations were ‘partners’ ‘unique initiative, ‘local SMEs’ strongest bonds and ‘Swedish Chamber’, with top associated emotions being ‘joy’ ‘love’ and ‘surprise’. Through social and editorial media, the campaign achieved an earned media reach of 17,6 million people and an earned media value of 153,300 SGD. This is addition to the 1,026,400 SGD worth of OOH and social media ad space we gained through donations from media partners. When compared to the initial investments of donations from each partner company, we achieved a total campaign ROI of 5x. Our featured micro-business saw spikes in visits, and several reported increased sales by 10-20%. They unlocked new opportunities: our tailor was featured in H&Ms’ sustainability campaign, our seamstress collaborated with AstraZeneca on a migrant worker initiative, 3 out of our Hawker participants won top awards at the recent SG Hawker Seminar, and the list goes on. SwedCham secured 7 new company membership and 2 membership upgrades. Per a membership survey, 71% are happy with their membership and highlighted SESG as a key factor.

Please tell us how the brand purpose inspired the work

Swedish Chamber of Commerce Singapore (SwedCham) is a non-profit that represents Swedish companies in Singapore, and its purpose is to facilitate exchange between Swedish and Singaporean companies. Covid-19 brought about challenges no business had faced before. Swedcham wanted to do its part to help out the local Singapore community, and its member companies, and therefore turned to its Swedish value of collaboration to come up with a new initiative. SESG brings together and help businesses -- big and small, from different industries, Swedish and Singaporean -- so that they all come out of this pandemic stronger than before. The campaign generated unprecedented visibility for the local businesses, new business ideas and initiatives, but more importantly showed the entire business community that we can weather any storm when we collaborate.