Tag: government

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On The Bird Wire

Campaign: ‘Grateful’ Surprise

Co-founder of Hornbills Concepts and Communications, Luenne, recently completed a project with two other ladies (Khalijah and Eleanor), that involved surprising the former President of Singapore, Mr S.R. Nathan.  The project had two parts: a book and a video. The book was made up of a collection of anecdotes about him as a boss, as a friend and as someone who never forgot the kindness shown to him. The video was to capture the surprise on his face when he was presented the book.

A campaign can be planned and executed in lighting speed and on a tight budget. The idea was mooted in December 2015. It took two months to source funders and convince them that this was a project worthy enough (and crazy enough) to fund. After which, the team only had about two months to write the book and complete the filming and hunt down the talents to interview. The team met with a lot of suspicion: connectors and friends of Mr Nathan wondered about their “agenda” for doing this book. More importantly, who was behind this project? Was there a political motive for doing this?  They cannot believe that the members of the team were just a bunch of curious individuals—welcome to the hipster generation. People do things just because!

But in many ways, this project was also about capturing an “alternative” SG50 story. It was not about  Mr Nathan as a president, but as Mr Nathan person.

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Mr Nathan’s colleagues in MFA

Luenne worked with a few of his protégées before and realized that they also inherited his “no-nonsense” trait. They were from a generation who were willing and ready to do the “heavy lifting”, as one of them described it.

Indeed, this trait is somewhat lost to a many these days as we grow up with an army of domestic helpers at our beck and call.

Will, trust and passion, are important ingredients needed to complete a project as crazy as this. There were hairy and tense moments especially when the deadline loomed and when  ‘moving parts’ of the project have not been pinned down. But in the end, when the whole thing was over, there was this huge sense of accomplishment and relief!

I made new friends and learnt a lot about old ones in the process!

Below is the video. Enjoy!

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On The Bird Wire

Reporting and Reputation: Don’t Be Too Quick To Judge

dreamstime_xs_47222230On January 3rd this year, the Straits Times ran a story on GIC’s (formerly known as the Government of Singapore’s Investment Corporation) efforts to “boost youth volunteerism via a $2m scheme offering students $3,000-$5,000 for 25 hours of community work”.

The Online Citizen (TOC) was quick to pick up on netizens’ responses to the scheme and published an article entitled “GIC’s pay-for-volunteering scheme gets criticised”. The article chose to bring attention to the massive online vitriol against the scheme, rather than the fact that volunteering was just one component of the Sparks & Smiles Scheme.

To any PR and Communications professional, this is a very interesting exercise in analysing the culture of reporting in Singapore and reputation management.

First, this episode reminds us of how small Singapore is in terms of its physical and news geography. There are only so many things that can be reported daily because of a certain level of self-censorship in the newsroom. Also, the readership of Straits Times and SPH’s papers has taken a hit as a result of digital news which has less self-censorship, but is nevertheless quite careful of what is being uploaded. More importantly, this culture of self-censorship is also fuelled by the lack of a certain degree of apathy by readers at large.

It is possible that the journalist attempted to highlight the volunteerism aspect of the scheme, thinking that it would draw attention to the article. Instead of giving her story a new perspective, it unfortunately drew much flak from the online community.

However, based on the reporting in the Straits Times’ forum section and the tabloid paper in the following days, one might speculate that the PR machinery of GIC would have pressed them for extra coverage to help them recover from the online tirade. This is any PR department’s “service recovery” dream: to get so much extra coverage for nothing.

Unfortunately though, they did not get the same ‘tender loving care’ from TOC. The comments below the TOC’s piece ran like a litany of grouses about GIC and this brings us to the second point about reputation management and GIC.

Reputation matters. It is the impression (rightly or wrongly) that people have about your organisation and it has implication on the way you do business and your relationship with the community. This entire episode is, in a way, a reflection of GIC’s reputation and how it resonates with some sections of society – some Singaporeans tend to associate GIC with politics and the state of affairs in Singapore.

As can be seen from the subsequent comments posted, many writers seem to take this opportunity to air their grievances about the current state of affairs in Singapore, what people are generally unhappy about and linking them back to GIC.

For GIC, perhaps this is a good time for them to consider embarking on a visibility campaign to make an effort to connect with the public so that they can better weather mistakes in the news room and other such debacles.

Luenne Choa is co-founder of Hornbills: Concepts and Communications. This commentary is based on her personal views.

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On The Bird Wire

China’s Vulnerability in the South China Sea

hb-scs-btThe Business Times published an opinion piece by Hornbills’ associate and China specialist, Mr Brendan Forde, on 5 November 2015.

The piece provided a comprehensive summary of the existing arguments and analysis on China’s actions in relation to the South China Sea, which are mostly framed around what China is doing, rather than why.

The piece posits that to understand why China has taken the steps it has, requires a consideration of the significance of the South China Sea, and its relationship to the disposition of China.

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On The Bird Wire

Death by a Thousand polls: Australia and the problem of leadership change

Turnbull articleThe Business Times published an opinion piece by Hornbills’ associate, Mr Brendan Forde, on 6 October 2015.

The piece discusses leadership change  in Australia, following the ascension of Malcolm Turnbull as Prime Minister after ousting the incumbent and fellow party member, Tony Abbott.

Originally entitled “Death by a thousand polls”, the piece noted the role that opinion polling has had in exacerbating issues contributing to  leadership change.