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Declining tourist numbers in Singapore partly due to STB using international agency network, says local agency boss

Bartholomeusz

Bartholomeusz

The boss of a well established local creative agency in Singapore has said that declining tourist numbers in the citystate are partly a result of Singapore Tourism Board using an agency network headquartered overseas.

Fiona Bartholomeusz, the MD and founder of integrated agency Formul8 wrote in a Facebook post, linking to a story by Coconuts Singapore on a sharp fall in tourism numbers in the citystate, that the decline was “no surprise”.

“Ain’t no surprise our tourism figures are declining sharply,” she wrote on the social network, before giving her views on why.

The first in her list reads: “Idiotic global ad campaign and STB continues to farm out the work to an agency that isn’t even local (seriously, what’s so damn bad about local agencies in Singapore when global brands are happy to use us?”

Bartholomeusz, who founded Formul8, which has an office in Dubai as well as Singapore, 15 years ago, suggested that the STB account should be led by a local agency that oversees a network of others agencies in the various target markets.

“Sorry, but I have to be nationalistic here,” she wrote. “I have always been put off by how STB never gives local firms the time of day, except to do the sweatshop type of work the “big boys” don’t want to touch.”

Bartholomeusz suggested that the current campaign to promote Singapore’s island theme park Sentosa, sloganed ‘State of fun’, was off the mark because Singapore is “too uptight to be a city for fun”.

The post:

Ain’t no surprise our tourism figures are declining sharply.

1. idiotic global ad campaign and STB continues to farm out the work to an agency that isn’t even local (seriously, what’s so damn bad about local agencies in Singapore when global brands are happy to use us..pffftt! It should be led by a local firm that oversees a network of other agencies in key markets that Singapore is targeting.

Sorry. but I have to be nationalistic here. I have always been put off by how STB never gives local firms time of day except to do the sweatshop type of work the “big boys” don’t want to touch)

2.singapore has lost its competitive edge, everything is just too expensive. With the falling euro….who wants to shop here anymore?

3.We’re too uptight to be a city for fun …who believes Sentosa’s Ministry of Fun campaign…really?! I could go on and on but why help STB when they think they know it all? The proof is in the numbers kiddo…

YourSingaporeSingapore Tourism Board has used the Singapore office of international agency network J. Walter Thompson as lead creative agency since April 2013. The CEO of JWT Singapore is German national Frank Bauer, but the agency has pointed out that most of the team that works on the STB brand, including creative and account management staff, are Singaporean. The business is led by Valerie Cheng, the agency’s creative director.

Before JWT, STB worked with agency networks BBH and Y&R.

STB also uses M&C Saatchi, led by Tanuj Philip, for its meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions (MICE) advertising.

JWT and STB declined to comment.

Tourist volume in Singapore has fallen by three per cent to 15.1 million visitors, the first time tourist arrival levels have dropped since 2009, the year of the global financial crisis.

The fall has been a result of dwindling Chinese holidaymakers and fears of air disasters, according to the article on Coconuts.

STB’s advertising has at time courted headlines for the wrong reasons over the last 12 months. An ad featuring a couple doing a romantic tour of Singapore created for the Philippine market by a Filipino broadcaster ABS-CBN in April last year went viral for being “cringeworthy”.

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