Skygemini & New Media: November 2010

The main purpose of advertising is to inform consumer about the benefits, price and availability of the products or services. It is a communication activity. However, consumer may think the purpose of today advertising has gone too exaggerate which creates false needs to them.

According to average consumer behaviour, it shows that individual seeks and processes information on advertising according to their needs and abilities to buy. Consumers also delay their purchase until they have collected sufficient information about the product or service. The decision is especially affected by the price and branding of certain products or services.

In the old days, there is hardly any humour elements in Singapore advertising. It probably is one of the rarest things to be done effectively in Singapore. It is not that Singaporean have no humour in them, but because the multicultural and being a conservative society, it could turn out to be a disaster when is not handles properly and ethically insensitive.

However the situation has changed. Singaporean is seeing more humour in local advertising nowadays. I reckon it is because the invasion of western culture, the young generation is adapting and accepting the change easily when the older generation may respond badly to these advertisements.

I would like to share with you two public transportation awareness campaigns' videos and few commercial advertisements in recent years. Audiences have different views and comments since the broadcast. Most of the people like them because it features local culture and character. However some receive negative feedbacks from the audience, such as this year Graciousness Programme advertising which features the Dim Sum Dolly. Most of the people find it annoying and less humour compared to last year's advertisement which featured local actor, Gurmit Singh as famous local drama character - Phua Chu Kang .

I managed to gather some Phua Chu Kang's posters which accidentally found in some train stations (I guess the staff may have overlooked and forgotten to take them out ?!!) and some are found in my photo folders. Meanwhile, I downloaded 2009 & 2010 both "Gracious" campaign videos from youtube which normally can be seen on the train's TV monitor only.

"A Happy Journey Starts Like That!"

Local famous drama character, Phua Chu Kang in SMRT 2009 Graciousness Programme

PCK 1

PCK 2

PCK 3

PCK 4

"Love Your Ride"

A continue campaign of Graciousness Programme in 2010, sung by Dim Sum Dollies

Dim Sum Dolly 1

Dim Sum Dolly 2

Dim Sum Dolly 3

Dim Sum Dolly 4

Dim Sum Dolly 5 (Campaign poster)

Besides the above two campaigns, I also included another three posters which wanted to increase public awareness about the their safety in train. These posters also have displayed the humour elements.