If you are a Singaporean, you probably would have been following the Aware saga (unless you are a totally apathetic citizen). On 4th & 6th May, we had the story of a designer who came up with quirky slogan t-shirts taken from memorable and mostly infamous quotes from the AWARE EOGM. Vicki Lew, design director at Bionic Creative, was featured in almost all the major newspaper and radio and TV news. So how did all that happen?

Here is the story.

On Sat, 2nd May, at around midnight (the night after the results of the no confidence vote against the ex ‘new committee’) I was checking out my Facebook posting my elation at the results and reading what my friends are saying about it. And there was Vicki’s post on her Aware t-shirt.

Now, I have always known Vicki to be a damn good designer. But I was pleasantly surprised at what she had done! Who would have thought of such a clever idea of making commemorative t-shirts from the most memorable quotes? And very nicely done too.

So I started chatting with Vicki who happen to be online also and found out that she was doing it as a means to raise money for AWARE. Wow! I immediately saw this as hot news, and told her that the media must be notified. Poor Vicki had been cracking her head to get publicity for her design work for some time. Ironically she didn’t seem to realise she actually just created the perfect PR opportunity!

So I had to do what a real friend must do. I jumped into action, got her to give me all the necessary info and in 15 minutes wrote a press release (see below) and then had it sent off to my media contacts. It was already past 1 am by then.

Monday came and her phone began to ring off the hook from all these interested media. Walah! You go girl, Vic!

At the time of this post she was already featured in Channel News Asia, 938Live radio, My Paper, The New Paper, Straits Times Online. Her design will be featured in 8 Days. Her t-shirt featured and her design firm name mentioned. Good Stuff!!

Lessons we can all learn:

Sometimes you don’t have to try so hard to get publicity. Do what you do best and the opportunity might just come to you…but of course having a friend who does PR would help

So if you want to be my friend, add me on Facebook. Click here. Or you can search for me: Dean Shams

Here’s the press release.

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