SINGAPORE – With the increasing use of social media platforms to drive B2C (“Business to Consumers”) communications, brands have found success in raising awareness for non-profit organizations via cause marketing campaigns. From campaigns such as Kraft’s “Share a Little Comfort” campaign and Target’s “Bullseye Gives” campaign,brands are engaging consumers around social causes with new and innovative ways online.
iFly Singapore’s new social media cause marketing campaign, ‘So You Think You Can Fly’, plans to raise awareness for seven charities by executing an integrated digital campaign. The campaign will see the development of a 5-episode reality series that will be hosted on the brand’s YouTube channel, an interactive Facebook application for fans to watch the reality series, vote for their favorite personalities and stand a chance to win prizes, a set of online PR activities including blogger engagement and various online community activations.
In this campaign, 5 local celebrities will go through a structured indoor skydiving training program and take part in the final competition on the 24th of June 2014 where they will stand to win $35,000 worth of cash and prizes for their respective beneficiaries.
The consistent representation of the campaign across the integrated digital platforms ensures that various iFly Singapore owned touch points create one experience for consumers. This is especially important for mobile content.
In 2013, reports show that Singapore has the second highest smartphone penetration in Asia Pacific, the world’s second highest social penetration rate, and it has more than 85 percent of its online population visiting social networking sites5. This creates a highly conducive environment for iFly Singapore to run a social media cause marketing campaign.
The episodes and promotional campaigns designed to raise awareness for the initiative will therefore be optimized for mobile viewing to cater to the growth of mobile and tablet users. The report by Nielsen also highlighted that 38 per cent of Singapore consumers viewed at least one video on a mobile device in the past 30 days.
So You Think You Can Fly will see the creation of five videos hosted on YouTube for rapid dissemination of information about the various charities and the story behind the celebrities’ passion for the seven causes. Viewers will be able to root for their favorite celebrities as they overcome the challenges of indoor skydiving and find out their personal stories behind their respective motivations behind the selected beneficiaries. Each episode will be approximately six minutes, sufficiently short to retain the attention of the busy consumer. After viewing each episode, fans will be encouraged to vote for their favorite celebrities and charities on a Facebook application created specifically for the campaign. The votes play a part in determining the final winner which further motivates fans to share the application with their friends. The celebrities would also reach out to their fan base through their owned social media properties.
Lawrence Koh, Founder and Managing Director of iFly Singapore shares, “We chose a cause marketing campaign because it is flexible and has great potential to engage our audience. When a person does something good for a meaningful cause, they often turn to social media to share it with their networks in an attempt to rally greater support for the cause. Hence via the digital medium we’ve selected to drive this campaign, creating peer-to-peer impressions is key to increasing awareness for the charities, their causes and the personality’s journeys. We hope that this will increase the chances of their friends taking action and joining the campaign.”
Karen Ho, Managing Director of Cohn & Wolfe Singapore shares, “staying true to our belief in integrated communications, we wanted to combine the various digital platforms into our public relations campaign to ensure the maximization of scope and scale of the campaign’s outreach and via leveraging social media platforms, amplify the results for iFly Singapore. Ultimately we believe that this will lead to a win-win situation for the various stakeholders involved in this process which includes our personalities, the charities that are involved and our client”.
The So You Think You Can Fly YouTube reality series will see iFly Singapore’s world class, IBA (“International Bodyflight Association”) trained instructors coach local actors and actresses, Randall Tan and Hayley Woo, former Model and MTV VJ, May and YouTube stars Dr Jia Jia and Munah from MunahHirzi. The personalities will be undergoing a strict training program designed to take them through the basics and onto more complex indoor skydiving maneuvers. They will be going up against each other in a series of competitive rounds in the grand finale on 24th June 2014 with the grand champion walking away with the cash prize of SGD$10,000. In addition, all charities will secure SGD$5,000 worth of flight time for the benefit of their members or caregivers of the non-profit organizations.
The following lists the celebrities and their selected beneficiaries respectively: Randall Tan fighting for Singapore Cancer Society, Hayley Woo for Club Rainbow, May for Lupus Association Singapore, Dr Jia Jia for Children Cancer Foundation, World Vision International and Save Our Street Dogs and Munah for Happy People Helping People.
The first episode for the reality series will premiere next Thursday, 29th May 2014. One episode will be rolled out every week thereafter. The campaign will see the celebrities pledge all of their winnings to the selected beneficiaries and the official results, will be released on the 24th of June 2014.
