Thanks to the multitude of dating websites and apps, finding love has never been easier. But in Singapore, online dating has given rise to a darker side - online love scams. Though women know of the existence of these scams, most believe this could never happen to them.

NCPC wanted to create awareness that no one is immune to online love scams and empower the audience to recognize the signs of a scam early to avoid falling for it.

Over the years, anti-scam advertising has become a blind spot for the audience. In order to create the right impact, we wanted to do things differently and chose to mask our film as a love story and not a scam story. Taking inspiration from real stories of scam, we wanted the audience to see a scam unfold from the eyes of the victim and that it can happen to anyone.

Singaporean women are aware of scams, yet they fall prey because of a sense of invulnerability. So we decided to tell the story of one such woman who thinks she has met her match made in online heaven. Only to then turn the love story on its head. Taking inspiration from real stories of scam, we wanted the audience to see a scam unfold from the eyes of the victim. Only to reveal the scam to the audience at the same time as the film’s protagonist, Ella discovers she is scammed too.

The idea is to ignite the awareness of any woman watching the film who might find herself in such a situation where she thinks she has found love on the internet. And lay bare to her that unfortunately, sometimes in everyday life the fairy tale ending she was hoping for can turn into something far, far tragic.

In spite of increased public awareness of online scams, the number of incidents have increased by 20% YOY since 2018. Singaporean women are aware of scams, yet they fall prey because of a sense of invulnerability.

Using the behavioural science approach to alter mindsets, we chose to move away from advertising that leads with warning or fear, to one that empowers our audience with vital clues to look out for.

We used Kahneman’s “System 1 & System 2” thinking to understand the audience and their behavioural nuances. The target is in her late 30s, professionally accomplished, confident and self-aware. For online love scams, these are not decisions that the victims make logically, they are made emotionally.

This film was created to arm our audience with information to spot signs of a love scam and social platforms empower women to share their voice thus empowering other women with crucial information.

Launched as a 3min content film across National Crime Prevention Council’s social channels – Facebook, Youtube, Instagram etc, the film drew in our audience with a poignant love story only to turn it on its head and reveal the scam to our audience at the same time as the film’s protagonist discovers she is scammed too.

The film launched on 20th November, 2020 and will run until the end of 2021.

Anti-scam government advertising often tends to become a blind spot in Singapore.

Since launch on 20th November 2020, the film has broken government advertising norms and reach by amassing ...

A total of over 18.5m impressions across YouTube, Facebook and display ads

And an unprecedented View-through Rate of 38.03%