Singapore is no stranger to the traveller seeking novel experiences, with a year-round roster of global pop culture events, music festivals, major leisure events, countless travel shows, and instagrammers helping to spread the sights, sounds and flavours of the country.
How do we reel in the browsing traveller looking for their next destination? How do we showcase the passions of people and organisations in Singapore championing sustainability of our food, heritage and innovation with each façade, bite, and experience? How do we address the concerns of an increasingly conscious community of globetrotters?
Two iconic Singapore (SG) brands – DBS Bank and Singapore Tourism Board (STB) joined hands to meet the challenge by showcasing the country through her unique, sustainable food experiences. After all, a meal is not brought together with just ingredients and skills, but involves passion built from necessity and ingenuity, steeped in the country’s culture.
Bringing together the two brands’ promises (DBS’ Live more, Bank less + STB’s Passion Made Possible), Live more SG was launched. The regional travel and experience campaign aimed to cement Singapore’s reputation as a sustainable urban destination, made accessible by DBS. DBS cardholders amongst both tourists and Singapore residents got to enjoy exclusive deals with sustainable merchants in Singapore.
As a mission, it was especially pertinent for DBS, building on its core purpose as the former Development Bank of Singapore – to create a more sustainable future for Singapore and extend our bank-wide movement #TowardsZeroFoodWaste.
Understanding the appetite for food content across social media and streaming platforms, we designed a delicious YouTube series featuring popular Singapore food influencer Lennard Yeong (@lennardy).
He traipsed across Singapore to roads less travelled and skylines less Instagram-ed, to discover the passions of people and organisations behind zero food waste practices and food resilience efforts that give rise to robust Singapore flavours.
Viewers got to peek into quintessentially Singaporean corners of the island – from kelongs (fish farms on offshore platforms) that hearken back to the country’s fishing past, to sky-high urban gardens that maximise the tiny island’s space. India, Indonesia and Hong Kong travel influencers also joined Lennard on his adventures, allowing their followers an insider glimpse of Singapore.
With every scene, the enduring Singaporean spirit of finding the magic in our limited resources carried the campaign’s salient advocacy on food sustainability.
As we sought to give an insider look at Singapore’s food culture through the videos, accompanying key visuals were developed to show dramatic cross sections of food against Singapore backdrops – presenting an intriguing ‘inside view’ on sustainable food choices. While our dishes might already be renowned worldwide, we were inviting the world to “savour Singapore like never before”.
The campaign ran across Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, and India, with each market offering their own landing page to funnel customers to the DBS deals and promotions.
While the campaign is still ongoing in some markets, the results thus far have exceeded expectations.
The video series has achieved more that 73 million views regionally, and the DBS YouTube account has seen a 150% increase in subscribers – a clear indication that viewers appreciated our brand of sustainability content and are eager to see more.
Through transaction volumes, we can see how the campaign has influenced customers to travel and spend in Singapore, with an understanding of how sustainability is imbued in the country’s sights and offerings. To date, most markets have seen >20% increase in spend during the campaign run vs YoY baselines, in the relevant merchant categories.