Singapore Media Awards (SMA) is an annual awards event that showcases the best of Singapore’s media industry, bringing together agencies, brands, media owners and creative partners for a night of celebration and networking. As a key sponsor for several consecutive years, Singtel Media was looking for a fresh approach and playful activation ideas to create an impact among an audience who has seen it all. An added challenge was that we only had small windows of time during the event in which to engage guests – before the main event started and then during brief breaks in the evening’s programme.
In 2016, Singtel Media partnered with XCO Media by SMRT whose marketing challenge was that disruptive technologies were changing OOH media. The audience had turned into zombies, people glued to their phones who didn’t pay attention to the world around them as they traveled through the city. So we forced them to pay attention by filling the venue with real-life zombies glued to mobile phones who were “activated” by being shot with a special Nerf Zombie blaster. This generated 600 pieces of highly shareable content from only 500 guests that set Singtel Media apart from other sponsors.
In 2017, the over-arching theme from SMA was “Let’s Get Intimate” which, combined with a free bar and a party atmosphere, presented us with the perfect setting for a lie-detector game which we called “The Shocking Truth”. Groups of colleagues posed office-related quiz questions to one co-worker with their hand in a lie-detector device. Anyone found to be avoiding the truth received a short electric shock which created some hilarious video and photo content shared by over 250 guests at the event.