Planning & Execution

Rusty interest toward the Transformers
The TRANSFORMERS (TF) is a popular entertainment franchise that has proliferated over the course of 28 years into an entertainment offering spanning multiple genres and platforms including toys, comics, movies as well as computer and video games. Despite its familiarity and house-hold name status, the perception of the TF brand in Singapore amongst the public and the media had become fatigued, needing rejuvenation and a ‘breath of fresh air’.

The situation was further compounded within the Republic with the Transformers Ride launched at the Universal Studios Singapore a month before announcing the Cybertron Con which meant that the media was already fatigued with TF-related news. As the appointed PR agency for TRANSFORMERS Cybertron Con (TFCC), SPRG commenced a 1.5 month campaign which revived the public’s interest in the brand, creating excitement and anticipation amongst the toy and collectors community as a result of outstanding media coverage coupled with strategic alliances with influencers within the community.

In order to reinvigorate the TF brand amongst stakeholders and solidify the TFCC as an event worth going for, we developed a multi-faceted PR strategy which is as follows:
• Reaching out to different segments of the target audience by leveraging on the local TF community including fans, collectors, customisers and designers to reinvigorate the TF Brand.
• Localising the TF brand – creating stories on the local TF community to increase relevance in Singapore.
• Increase public awareness and interest through guerrilla activation at high-foot traffic areas.
• Converting the online community and bloggers into community influencers through engagement.

Overcoming Media Fatigue – Creating personable and relatable human-interest stories
In order to overcome the media fatigue, a key component in SPRG’s PR strategy was to create stories around the existing TF community in Singapore. As such, we made the TF brand more personable to readers, highlighting human interest stories that highlighted the affection toward the franchise in Singapore.
To increase the relevance of the TF brand:
• SPRG reached out and created stories about local collectors and fans in Singapore, in particular, the S.T.F.U. fan club in Singapore which has an active fan base of close to 1000 members.
• Initiating the first-ever ‘TRANSFORMERS RE-IMAGINED’ competition where local designers submitted their versions of Optimus Prime and Bumblebees designs.

Online blogger engagement: initiating the [TRANSMISSIONS FROM CYBERTRON CON]
SPRG identified bloggers as key influencers in the market as many of them managed blogs which published information on the TF. To engage them further:
SPRG initiated the [TRANSMISSIONS FROM CYBERTRON CON] email update system which provided short and timely updates on the latest news, releases and visuals etc. related to the ‘Con’.

Optimus Prime and Bumblebee Take on Singapore, Guerrilla-style
To generate hype and awareness amongst the public, SPRG conceptualised a guerrilla activation which involved TF characters, Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, taking a ‘tour’ around Singapore’s popular local hotspots where they would meet and greet the locals.
• Media (photojournalists and bloggers) were invited for the activation.
• Radio stations such as Class 95FM, 98.7FM, 93.3FM and 91.3FM were also given wind of the ‘tour’, where radio personalities gave listeners hints on the ‘tour’ as well as promoted the event on air.

Effectiveness / Results

The event was attended by 50, 000 visitors, surpassing the 37,000 achieved at the TFCC 2010.

In a short span of less than 2 months, we garnered over 8,420,000 USD worth of press coverage in PR value across more than 277 clippings, achieving an ROI of over 270 fold for the event.

Local coverage spanned across both medium and language as the event was mentioned in broadcast, print and online media in English, Mandarin, Bahasa Melayu and Tamil.

In particular, the Con’s opening day made a clean sweep across all local dailies and news television programmes including regional news broadcast channel, ‘Channel News Asia’. Key international media such as Xinhua News Agency, Associated Press, Bernama, Thomson Reuters, TVB (HK) and CNN-IBN (India) covered the event as well.

Besides media clippings, a Google search of the key phrase (using Boolean logic) “TRANSFORMERS Cybertron Con 2012” brought over 75,100 different unique search results which were specific to the event. Of the search, over 26,200 were classified as ‘blogs’, many of which were sites hosting the 8,670 related videos and 16,900 images available on the internet.