Tag: media

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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

Raising environmental awareness amongst Muslims

BH featureOn 13 May 2011, Sofiah Jamil was featured in Singapore’s Malay Newspaper – Berita Harian – on her research and advocacy work on faith-based environmentalism.

In the article, Sofiah noted how countries in the Muslim World largely fall into at least one of three categories in relation to climate change.

  1. Victims of climate change: Countries such as Bangladesh and Indonesia face rising sea levels and flooding, while sub-saharan Africa face drought.
  2. Contributors of climate change: Oil-rich Gulf Arab states have one of the highest carbon emissions per capita in the world, while the rate of deforestation in Indonesia makes its total carbon emissions to be just behind the US and China.
  3. Solutions to address climate change: Despite the bleak scenario, there are still opportunities for countries in the Muslim world to play a more active role in addressing environmental challenges. Resource rich Muslim countries ought to better strategise how they can invest in technology and other solutions. More effort would be needed for forest rich countries like Indonesia to preserve and rehabilitate their forests which act as “carbon sinks”.

In addition, all Muslims can do their part by taking inspiration and guidance from their faith. Despite the wealth of Islamic knowledge on nature and the environment, little has been done by Muslims to operationalise these principles. In this regard, further community action is needed.

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On The Bird Wire

Music as Soft Power

Students of political science and international relations are accustomed to the term ‘soft power’ as coined by Prof Joseph Nye of Harvard University. Soft power refers to factors such as values and cultures which are primary currencies in influencing world politics. This is opposed to notions of hard power, where the use of military force and coercion are paramount.

In this article for the Sunday Plus in Pakistan’s The Nation, Sofiah Jamil shares her views of how Junoon (commonly dubbed as the U2 of Pakistan) is by far one of the best examples of soft power. As the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, once said, “Music is the universal language of mankind.” Junoon’s songs have crossed linguistic and territorial boundaries far beyond the Indian sub-continent. Although the group disbanded in 2004, its music continues to be a shining beacon of peace and love.

The article was written in conjunction with Junoon’s 20th anniversary in 2011.