Gov.sg

The Objective

Gov.sg is Singapore Government's public communications channel managed by the Ministry of Communications and Information. In the lead-up to and during the festive Chinese New Year (CNY) period, Gov.sg sought to remind Singaporeans of the safe management measures in place to curb the transmission of COVID-19 in Singapore through a fun, engaging yet informative challenge on TikTok.

The Solution

Gov.sg launched its #SteadyCNY2021 Branded Hashtag Challenge in February 2021, which encouraged users to engage with fun and interesting CNY-themed filters that incorporated reminders on key safe management measures – keep to 8 visitors per household and 1-2 home visits per day; use serving utensils and not sharing food, and if one is sick, to see a doctor immediately and not visit or host others. To emphasize these points, Branded Effects were also used featuring animated CNY-related props such as red packets, the God of Fortune hat, and a lion dance, which could be easily triggered with simple hand gestures, encouraging users of all ages, young and old, to participate.

These filters were also accompanied by a catchy, upbeat CNY-themed song by popular veteran singer Huang Qing Yuan. The song was also featured in Gov.sg's CNY interstitial, which ran on Free-to-Air TV, Cable TV, digital and social platforms during the same period thus raising audience familiarity to the song. To further drive reach and awareness, Gov.sg also collaborated with five popular TikTok creators in Singapore. Creators were encouraged to participate in the challenge with their family members, to encourage users to do likewise. High visibility for the challenge was also garnered with Brand Premium and One Day Max In-Feed Ads. In addition, the campaign was promoted in the Discovery Page as a feature Banner and # In List.

The Results

Gov.sg's Branded Hashtag Challenge exceeded expectations -- video participation by more than 15,600 users collectively attracted 23.3 million video views. The interesting and easy-to-use Branded Effect encouraged maximum interactions, with 1.97 million engagements. Close to one-fifth of users also submitted more than one video, which showed that they enjoyed playing around with the good variety of Branded Effects. With the #SteadyCNY2021 challenge, Gov.sg was able to achieve its objective of keeping the COVID-19 safe management measures top of mind among the TikTok community during the festive season while ensuring that Singaporeans celebrated CNY safely.