Client: Global Leadership Academy.

The idea:

When the idea of a conference of happiness was muted, it was met with much skepticism. Why would anyone want to have a conference on happiness? But when the content was shared with us, it made complete sense.

The New Science of Happiness and Well-Being conference will have nine leading experts in the field of Positive Pscyhology coming together to share their research findings on how to achieve and/or sustain happiness in one’s life. It is not another ‘hype’ created by new age and motivational gurus based on their own opinions.

The challenge:

If we assume that Singaporeans are very practical, and maybe even cynical, people, then just selling the conference based on its title may not work.

The challenge was

1. to get Singaporeans to start thinking about what happiness means to them and how they have prioritised it despite the daily demands at work and at home; and
2. to get the target audience, corporate and executives, to take the conference seriously and think about the implications at their work place

The strategy:

Survey data showed that Singaporeans ranked their country as among the most stressful places to live in, with nine in ten Singaporeans feeling that life here is getting more stressful, and they want more fun.

Backed with these data, the first ever Search for the Happiest Person in Singapore was developed. Publicity for the Search will become the vehicle to carry the main message behind the Conference. A competition like this has never been done in any country except in USA, but only once, many years ago.

The outcome:

A press conference was organised to announce the launch. The story was met with much excitement by the media. The news appeared in all the major newspapers and broadcast news. It quickly became a talking point among many local bloggers. AFP picked up the news and this led to international media carrying the story. The Conference was consistently mentioned within the story creating the strong relevance and brand recognition needed.

To build the buzz up a notch, the announcement of the winner was staggered. The four finalists occupying the top three positions were announced at a press conference (two persons were tied in the third position). The actual position they occupy was not revealed, just to create a little suspense. The winner was to be announced only on the last day of the conference.

Happiness became the topic of the moment. Editors began to feature more articles on the topic. Business Times wrote a two-page article on work life balance. Though these articles were not directly linked to the Conference or the Search, we cannot say that it was just pure coincidence.

By now the news of the Conference was already ‘warmed up’. So when we released the news of the Conference itself, Straits Times and Business Times were interested in covering. This led to further spin off stories and interviews with Straits Times. Channel News Asia gave three interview slots with the speakers in their Prime Time Morning programme. This led to a spin off interview with some of the psychologist for their Medical Touch programme. We managed to get one studio interview with 938Live radio on the launch of the Search and another interview session broadcasted live from the conference for the whole of The Living Room show.

Coverage Summary:

Total Broadcast (TV & radio) coverage: 35

Total Print (newspapers & magazines) coverage: 26

Total Spin off stories: 4

+ Online Blog discussions and International media placements

Want to know more? Contact us at getpublicity@kinetiqbuzz.com