In Singapore, the younger generation generally find it harder to commit to marriage – often procrastinating in the hope of finding their ideal soul mate – a figure dictated by western popular culture. This campaign created by the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports, a key ministry within the Singapore government, sought to change this and ultimately increase the number of marriages registered as well as simultaneously reduce the divorce rate.Essentially what this campaign was tasked to do, was encourage singles to be more open to relationships – and to get them to realize that perfection (and love) can be found even amongst ‘imperfect’ partners.

The launch vehicle was a 3-minute spot via cinema and television that took a very atypical approach to dealing with the topic of marriage by setting it at a funeral. The spot revolves around the unusual eulogy of a widow talking about her late husband and his many idiosyncrasies and how she misses his imperfections after his death.To sustain the momentum of the film post regular broadcast media, we engaged users online through the use of social media – YouTube and Facebook.A Facebook platform was created entitled Beautifully Imperfect – the page was a place for people touched by the spot to come together and share their own Beautifully Imperfect stories. This included a Facebook contest to find the most Beautifully Imperfect couple based on the number of votes received for their stories.

On an awareness level, this was Singapore’s most successful campaign - watched by more than 2.7 million people (Singapore’s population is just 4 million) on social media in less than 20 weeks and generating more than US$2.3 million of PR across print, television and radio.On Facebook, it received 17 million impressions and pulled together 17,900 fans and over 8,000 comments. Not to mention 120,000 unique visitors.On YouTube, it was the 19th most favourited video in the world and 88th most watched globally in the month of April 2009.