It’s 2024 and increasingly difficult to reach audiences through advertising. Singaporeans are savvier than ever, they sniff out ads in milliseconds and nope out of there before any messaging hits. This low retention results in ads being pushed even ad further down algorithms. More sophisticated readers (especially the youth) are the reason paid media gets more expensive every year and why their effectiveness continues to dwindle. People don’t like ads, precisely because they look like ads. Irritating, irrelevant, and not something they want to see disrupting their feeds. But what if brands were able to turn their messages into content readers loved? The art of engineering creative content to help our clients stand out is what we’ve been proudly doing over the last decade. It’s 2024 and it’s tougher than ever to get visibility, and we are still able to get amazing results. (Our case studies below have been updated to recent examples). Why are we able to? Since our early beginnings, we have been driven by this fundamental belief:
“People don’t hate ads, they just hate bad ads.”
When you create ads the right way, your followers will appreciate it and will even thank you for showing them an ad. Imagine that!
Good content is why some people even enjoy seeking out funny Thai ads to watch. You have to respect your readers and believe ads don’t have to be a painful experience, they can be enjoyable. Readers respect the effort put in to create a good ad. This is how we get clients results that they can’t get with other publishers.
TSL started as a media publication and today, our media group of 10 brands gets over 200 million pageviews and an additional 200 million video views each year. We produce over 15,000 pieces of content across our titles annually and have an immense amount of data on what content works. We rely on our unique insights to plan campaigns and provide advice to our clients, creating award-winning campaigns that exceed all KPIs. In 2023 we acquired a tech company to strengthen our insights and data team and in 2024, we acquired an influencer agency to increase our distribution network. We have developed on our social media listening and data tools. We take data very seriously and it drives all our decision making.
TSL’s end-to-end service:
TSL works with all the major media agencies, government boards and MNCs, breaking records as we surpass KPIs and help our partners win awards and recognition. Here are some examples: Mumbrella Canon Story | Marketing Interactive Singtel Story | Marketing Interactive Amazon Story | Marketing Interactive Scoot Story | CampaignAsia “The Future of lifestyle publishing” | Top YouTube Ads | SMA Award Winner | Top YouTube Ads | Mumbrella Media Brand Of The Year.
One of our biggest achievements was being recognised by Mumbrella Asia Awards as the top Media Brand of the Year in Asia, when we were up against heavyweights like CNBC, South China Morning Post and VICE Asia. We were extremely honoured to have won the title for Singapore.
A group shot of our company and staff. This was during the opening ceremony of our new office, officiated by Minister Desmond Lee.
There are five main ways for brands to reach readers in 2024.
This is currently the most popular content format in the world, thanks to TikTok which popularised this snappy video style that is usually under 60 seconds. Instagram, FB and YT have all followed suit and now prioritise shorts more than anything else. If you’re a brand, you have to be on shorts to stay relevant. But this format has been a huge obstacle for many clients, as it’s not easy to get visibility and messages in such a short time. But brands can get amazing results with the right approach. We help clients through two main ways.
Direct Shorts: Many people read TSL for ideas on what to do in Singapore. If it’s an event/place/opening, we use a vlog-style approach with our team’s personalities to help the viewers experience it through our lens. In the hands of skilled content creators with a strong following and reputation, you will get amazing results like the examples below.
This works best if the event/product is somewhat interesting. Such as a hotel giveaway or sales promotion. If your brand is a financial service or if the nature of your messaging isn’t the easiest to market, a direct style might not work. In those situations, our team works their creativity juices to come up with a tailored strategy to make your message pop. This is our speciality – we make ads fun for our community of followers by turning your message into exceptional content. Here are some examples of how we do indirect shorts to grab the attention of our viewers.
Indirect shorts:
Client: Scoot | Format: Challenge – Reuniting loved ones
Is it possible for airline ads to go viral on social media organically? The “Scoot with Heart” campaign message was about treasuring the human connections we all have in our lives. But that’s not the easiest message to get across if done as a straightforward ad. CSR messages like that usually don’t get visibility and definitely don’t go viral. Together with Scoot, we came up with this creative idea of going around the streets of Singapore, taking our time to seek out and approach people who might long for a connection. We ended up finding Uncle Wee, a jovial centenarian living in Singapore, who was separated from his family living in Indonesia and resigned to spending his days alone. With the help of Scoot’s ability to bring people together, we reunited them by flying his relatives over to Singapore, and filming the whole journey. This campaign went viral across Singapore and was mentioned on the radio and in marketing magazines. Comments were overwhelmingly positive and readers absolutely loved Scoot for this! And this storytelling was all done skillfully with the shorts format, that has limited time!
We had also previously helped Scoot stand out during the National Day period where it’s key for brands to want to be associated with the positive sentiments around this period. We flew to a Scoot destinations Seoul and Melbourne, and filmed a series of viral and heartwarming videos where we found Singaporeans who had made a life for themselves overseas. And we surprised them by making them Kopi, to give them a taste of home, as well as Scoot vouchers to come back.
But there are so many other ways that we can help airlines. You can leave it to our team of strategists to come up with a creative format suitable for your brand. Here’s a different style, where we focused on the destination and activties of a couple.
Client: Singapore Airlines | Format: Challenge – Travelling with a stranger
In this video, the hook was one of our talents approaching strangers on the street with a challenge… to go with him on a date to an unknown destination in under 24 hours. So for one magical day, these former strangers had an epic date in Paris, one of SQ’s destinations. Apart from it being a very wholesome and enjoyable video to watch, we also managed to show off key messages of the airline, like the free Wi-FI connectivity that passengers can now enjoy on SQ flights. And we did it very naturally as the couple kept their parents updated.
A major thing to note is that many of these videos were also shared on the brand’s page through the collab function e.g Scoot, helping them get a brand lift for their own socials. Given that we are one of the few to have a huge following across all the major platforms, we also posted the same video across multiple platforms to get the most mileage for the client. This allowed the brand messages to reach out to different segments and many of the videos did extremely well across multiple platforms.
Our ability to create content extends across any imaginable vertical. There are always ways to create content while showing brand messages. One of the most difficult verticals for marketing folks is financial services, especially messages from banks. In the videos below, you can see how we skillfully wove in core messages for our partners, while making the video still entertaining to watch.
Client: Citibank | Message: Citi Rewards Mastercard Points | Format: Wholesome surprise for strangers
This “Paying for Strangers” concept was so successful, it ended up being a 3-part series! Here’s another video we did for another bank. Because there are so many possibilities for creative content, we always ensure that brands are given unique formats/segments to be associated with.
Client: DBS| Message: DBS yuu card cash rebates | Format: Challenge: Cooking for strangers
Client: AIC | Message: Breaking The Silver Ceiling | Format: Challenge: Learning climbing for the first time.
Some readers want the details that Shorts cannot provide. While shorts are usually great for generating buzz for a few days, the details are often lacking and it’s not very searchable or long-term. There’s only so much text you can have in the caption and video. This is where editorial advertising comes in. This format provides substantial messaging and detail that compliments shorts well. We usually recommend our partners to get a mixture of both shorts and editorial coverage, so they get the best of both worlds. Like Shorts, if the message is somewhat interesting, a direct article would work. These are examples of direct articles:
But where our team shines is getting incredible visibility for brand messages that aren’t easy to market.
Indirect editorial articles:
We’ve even helped brands like aircon servicing companies have their content get an insane amount of engagement and go viral through our creative content ideation.
And of course, readers always love it when an advertisement is done well. This is the article we did for Casio to promote their new camera.
Here’s another example with McDonald’s which promoted a new menu item and it accumulated over 13,000 Facebook shares. The engagement was completely organic and high quality. (unlike paid media where you’re lucky to get any shares)
3. Long-form videos: People are shocked whenever they learn our YouTube videos have an average view time of over 7 mins. Especially when sites like FB and TikTok on average retain users for less than 10 seconds of video viewing time. Long-form production can be costly, however, this added retention time makes a great vehicle for more complicated messaging. We recommend clients long-form videos when they have a bigger budget and when the message can be complicated.
Other long-form formats that work well are documentaries, explainer videos, short films and comedy skits.
Segments:
Content with sensitive subject matter:
Explainer/Docu videos:
Films:
Skits:
4. Direct: Conversions are often an important metric and direct clicks are best achieved when the message is short and attention almost immediate – such as when it goes straight to their mobile phone notifications.
While EDMs have fallen out of favour over the years, the good news is TSL also has in its ecosystem something far better – TelegramCollective. It is a distribution arm that we had built from scratch into the largest Telegram network in the region, with over 500,000 followers across various communities such as “SG Budget Babes”, “SG Weekend Plans” and “SG Food Deals”, thus giving clients the ability to target specific communities of ours.
5. Influencers/Creators: Sometimes, readers turn to people they follow organically to find out about the world. These are usually leaders in the spaces they follow or what we call community leaders – those with an influence over a specific category be it home & living or parenting. With our recent acquisition, we now have a pool of over 3,000 influencers across Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia that you can reach out to. We don’t recommend engaging influencers for the whole campaign, but rather as a complement to existing editorial or shorts content that you are creating. We believe there has to be something substantial created first with proper strategy and media. After that, part of the distribution can include KOLs to complement your campaign.
The way we approach Influencer marketing is result-based, so you can be sure we’ll hit all the viewership targets that we have specified upfront.
A big differentiator of TSL is getting our clients coverage across every major platform in Singapore. Too often, digital advertising is done on just one channel as most publishers are strong on just a single platform. But the Internet is more than just Facebook or Instagram. It’s our Telegram network with 500,000 subscribers. It’s highly targeted communities on Lemon8, XiaoHongShu or even our more well-heeled communities (e.g Colto.sg). Our success across every major channel in Singapore allows advertisers to reach out to different communities and target audiences.
Given the amount of platforms in the world today, we believe content should also be allowed to be repurposed accordingly. As a value-add, you can share the content we create on your channels through the collab function, so you benefit from our reach. Our content created for social can also be repurposed as assets in outdoor display marketing for a small loading fee, like in the GIF below.
Clients looking for large-scale campaigns can also consider long-form formats like network programs. Apart from the digital push on our YouTube channel, our 10-part series The $100 Nomad was shown on prime time TV at 8pm on Channel 5. The TV show was also been shown regionally in 4 different markets across Asia, bringing tremendous visibility for our partners featured. We can create commissioned network programming for clients and have it attract regional interest. Our reality show “One Week Love” aired on Netflix in Feb 2024, giving major brand uplift to our client partners like Grab. It’s been a dream for many of our clients to be featured on Netflix, and we’re glad we’ve been able to help some of our partners achieve that.
At the end of the campaign, all of our clients will also get a beautifully presented real-time report, that is automatically refreshed every time it is loaded.
Example of a report we provide after our campaign. It can also be saved as a PDF.
TheSmartLocal readers are made up of Singaporeans looking for ideas on what to do in and out of Singapore. We cover the best activities, travel ideas, hotels, restaurants and so on and promote good finds and promotions to Singaporeans. 85% of our traffic is from Singapore and 80% of our readers are between 18-45. You can get our full demographics and media kit by sending an email to our team at sales@thesmartlocal.com.
For smaller companies and new advertisers, we recommend trying out our editorial posts or shorts, our two best-performing formats.
Summary of TSL advertising options:
We also provide other digital services but it’s our traffic and reach that you want to utilise.
Some of our reviews have been highly influential – a positive review went viral and caused so much hype for the restaurant that all the local newspapers covered the queues it was getting.
Our advertising translates into real-world results which are sometimes so huge they block the entrances of their competitors.
We have had the privilege of working with many MNC companies, large businesses, agencies and home-grown local companies.
We also have a long collection of testimonials that can be seen upon request. Should you wish to receive our latest media kit, have a look at previous case studies or have any further questions, send an email to our team at sales@thesmartlocal.com.
And if you want to learn even more about digital marketing in Singapore, check out my digital marketing blog.
– Written by Bryan Choo, founder of TSL.