NTUC Income believes that every Singaporean deserves a chance at a better future. We identified that the struggles that disadvantaged youths have to go through when it comes to their education are often invisible to the eye. Hence, the best way to shine the light on this unnoticed issue and bring NTUC Income’s values to life in a way that would get shared and generate publicity, seemed to be telling their untold story. We created “Last Day of School”, an emotional, short film over 5 minutes in length, based on the true story of an OrangeAid beneficiary. It follows Siew Fang, a girl with big dreams but with even bigger responsibilities towards her family. She is faced with the ultimate test when she has to choose between her studies and her family.

Agency best practice and Unruly have shown that content has around 72 hours to maximise sharing. We devised a plan to create buzz around the film online, in this time frame, to make it trending. This would in turn earn traditional news coverage, which could fuel further online sharing. We identified news media, influencers and alternative media platforms, shared the film and information about OrangeAid with them and asked them to lend their voice to the cause. We worked with online communities – SGAG, 9GAG and Viddsee – the platform that hand-pick Asia’s best short films – to propagate “Last Day of School” to their audience of avid content-sharers. We held an event for NTUC Income employees, the morning of its launch and reached out to OrangeAid partners, policyholders and prior OrangeAid donors – asking them to get involved. We used Facebook, YouTube and Unruly advertising to boost initial viewership.

1.Get aware of the issue (Source: Q3, 2015 brand tracker).

KPI:Exceed 25% campaign awareness

Result:Achieved a campaign awareness of 27%, slightly above expectations.

2.Share the issue (Source: NTUC Income – aggregating YouTube, Facebook and online/PR shares).

KPI:Beat category benchmarks for share-rates (1%, according to Unruly)

Result:A share rate of about 5%, far exceeding our expectations.

KPI:Create mainstream media press coverage

Result:Coverage of “Last Day of School” and OrangeAid in leading national daily newspapers, like The Straits Times, Shin Min Daily, Lianhe Zaobao and The New Paper. “Last Day of School” became the most trending video on YouTube on the first day of launch and stayed in the top ten most popular videos of Singapore for two weeks (Source: YouTube Trends Dashboard).

3.Donations

More than SGD100,000 donated to the OrangeAid fund between July and December 2016, compared to SGD3,500 between January and June 2016 – a 29-fold increase (Source: NTUC Income).