Chinese New Year is a time for traditions such as family reunions, the giving of “gold” in the form of oranges and the exchange of Ang Pows.
TANGS, Singapore’s iconic shopping destination, feels it’s time to freshen up everyone’s favourite tradition, the giving of Ang Pows, by giving it a more contemporary and meaningful twist.
Introducing the ‘Get a blessing, Give a blessing’ charity drive. TANGS customers are encouraged to donate a portion of their festive funds through these limited edition Ang Pows which can be cleverly divided into two smaller ones. They can then drop one smaller Ang Pow into the donation boxes at TANGS, with all proceeds going to Singapore Children’s Society.
“Chinese New Year is a time of giving and sharing joy,” says Kevin Dyson, Chief Operating Officer of TANGS. “Following the success of our Shop for Good initiative, we saw an opportunity to extend the goodwill at different times of the year. As we welcome the Year of the Monkey, we hope our customers will extend their wishes for health and prosperity to the less fortunate by giving generously.”
This initiative was developed in conjunction with independent creative agency, Blak Labs. “It’s a tradition to give an Ang Pow as a blessing. Now, you can pass the blessings to those who need it most,” adds Charlie Blower, Managing Partner of Blak Labs.
Limited-edition Ang Pows are available, while stocks last during the festive season, from TANGS at Tang Plaza and TANGS VivoCity.
Gardens by the Bay recently re-appointed independent Singapore agency, Blak Labs, following a tender.
The appointment is for 2 years with the option for the client to extend for 12 months.
Blak Labs continues to create all local and international branding efforts for the People’s Garden and works hand in hand with the client’s media, digital and PR agencies.
On the appointment, Charlie Blower, co-founder and Managing Partner of Blak Labs said:
“From day one, we’ve grown our relationship with Gardens by the Bay by delivering great creative with our proprietary Creative Care®. So to be reappointed yet again, especially when we were up against some of Singapore’s top agencies is particularly rewarding.”
This is the third time that Blak Labs has successfully tendered for Gardens by the Bay. The Singapore boutique pitched for the launch in 2011, followed by another tender for a further 2 year appointment.
For more information about Blak Labs, please contact Charlie Blower at charlie.blower@blaklabs.com
The original post was first published 10 months ago following World Marrow Day in 2015.
On 14th May this year I met the lovely Jane Prior, CEO of Singapore’s Bone Marrow Donor Programme, at the BMDP Gala. She made my night when she told me that the exhibition Blak Labs created has resulted in 12,000 new sign-ups as potential Bone Marrow Donors. Now if just one of those potential donors can follow through when they’re called on and save a life…well, that would be something.
For the best part of a year, the Bone Marrow Donor Programme (BMDP) has been working with Blak Labs to build an integrated recruitment campaign to sign up new donors.
The campaign called “#Match4Life” launches across digital, outdoor and social channels just in time for the inaugural World Marrow Donor Day on September 19th. At the heart of the campaign is an exhibition at 313@Orchard as well supplementary street team activities to drive awareness and donor recruitment.
Featuring past recipients of bone marrow donations, as well as young donors from the Malay, Indian and Chinese community, the exhibition content shows how the act of becoming a donor matches two complete strangers in a life-saving bond.
“When we receive a request to find a match for a patient, all other treatment options have failed and at that stage it’s transplant or die. Our challenge is that there is a 1 in 20,000 chance of finding a matching donor,” said Jane Prior, CEO of Singapore’s Bone Marrow Donor Programme.
“It’s a huge issue as 6 people in Singapore are diagnosed with a blood cancer such as lymphoma or leukaemia every single day. For many of these patients a transplant is their only chance of survival which is why we urgently need more people to sign up and join the register,” Prior adds.
The campaign is the first phase in the BMDP’s drive to grow the registry by 50,000 new donors over the next three years, but it faces a number of challenges. Amongst these, Prior cites misconceptions around donation methods, loss of virility and faith as being the hardest to overcome.
To create the content, Blak Labs taped a series of interviews with survivors and donors to get their experiences straight from the heart. For video content, please refer to the Youtube playlist: https://youtu.be/iUTRbnLArDc
The team also completely redesigned http://bmdp.org/ to ensure ease of recruitment.
“We’re delighted to be able to support BMDP in their drive to reach 50,000 new donors. This isn’t just another campaign. If it works, it actually means that lives will be saved,” said Charlie Blower, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Blak Labs.
“The campaign is deliberately lo-fi and unfiltered because we want the real emotions and experiences of these remarkable survivors and the amazing donors to come through,” adds Blower.
In addition to support from Blak Labs, the BMDP campaign has been helped off the ground with media sponsorship raised through UM, backend digital support from Crimson Works, photography by Ric Tang of Tangography and video production by The Reel Thing.
“We’d like to take this opportunity to thank the team at UM. They’ve done a fantastic job of securing media sponsorship worth S$120,000 across multiple channels and media owners. The guys at Crimson Works have also worked hard to help us simplify the registration process. Now it’s easier for potential donors to sign up. And with Salesforce support, it’s faster for BMDP to get their swab kits out to potential donors. The support from the guys at The Reel Thing and Tangography has been amazing.”
Team
Creative Directors: Charlie Blower, Elsa Peck
Art Directors: Royston Ang, Regina Lee
Digital Designers: Regina Lee, PeiWen Low
Copywriters: Charlie Blower, Elon Law, Alicia Tan
Producer: Ken Tam
Photography: Ric Tang, Tangography
Retouching: Evan Lim, The Rabbit Hole
Production: Chee Kin, Joe, The Reel Thing
Digital developers: Alex, Leo, Crimson Works
Printing: HP, digione
Media: UM, YiLiang, , Ray Pak,
About The Bone Marrow Donor Programme
The BMDP is a charity and IPC responsible for building and managing Singapore’s only register of volunteer donors who are willing to donate their bone marrow to save the lives of patients with leukaemia and other blood diseases and who need a transplant to survive. The BMDP also provides a service to the hospitals to find a matching donor for their patients. So far almost 500 patients have been given a chance of survival through the work of the BMDP and the need grows every year as transplants become a routine treatment for these most common forms of cancer. More details are at http://bmdp.org/
About Blak Labs Pte Ltd
Established in 2010, Blak Labs is one of Singapore’s fastest-growing integrated creative independents. With its focus on Creative Care®, the micro-agency has successfully attracted projects from Maybank (Singapore), Gardens by the Bay, CDL and has recently set up a new venture in Myanmar.
For more information about Blak Labs, please contact Charlie Blower at charlie.blower@blaklabs.com or call +65 9007 8195.
‘Subject: ‘IMPORTANT!!’ I didn’t recognise the name of the sender, let’s call her Nadia Johnson. What could it be? What have I missed? Is it the bank? Tax office? Maybe it’s something good? A publisher with a huge cheque wanting to turn this blog in to a book? What could it be? Should I be worried? Excited? Turned out ‘Nadia’ was a student looking for a job.
So it was a kind of trick. I guess Nadia thought that if she put ‘IMPORTANT!!’ in the subject box I’d read on. She was right. But she hadn’t considered how I’d feel by the end of the email – tricked. So if someone asked me to pick one email from my inbox that wasn’t important, I’d pick that one. Because she’d forced me to assess its importance.
In advertising, over-claiming is second nature . It’s easy to get clients to buy it, but hard to get the public…
From time to time, in your ordinary exercise of the delights of the online world, you may find yourself accosted by clods. These oafish louts crave your time and attention, but in point of fact, life is short and you have better things to do.
For you, I have created this helpful numbered list of standard responses to online stupidity. When accosted, send the twit here to read the specific numbered response(s) relevant to them. Saves you time; alerts them they’re a jerk, and this is all the response they rate.
Use and enjoy.
I don’t care what you think.
I didn’t ask you.
No doubt you thought that was terribly clever.
You’ve attempted logic. Not all attempts succeed.
One should not have that many errors in that few characters.
Either your educators have failed you, or you have failed them.
I see you’ve invited me to an argument. I decline.
I get a ton of emails every day, most which I just delete after a cursory glance. But newsletters from the chaps at Bluewire Media always get read. The reason? I often learn something new. Plus they believe in the power of sharing and the “thank you economy”. They freely share their own social media planning tools and templates, which I find useful and they also do a bunch of podcasts, webinars and monthly giveaways. Which are also filled with good usable stuff. My advice? Check them out!
Yesterday Bluewire Media turned 10. So congrats to Adam (@Franklin_Adam) and Toby (@Toby_Jenkins) on achieving that milestone, from an independent agency owner here in Singapore! Your reach extends way beyond the shores of Oz, and your monthly competition does too!
Which is why I’d like to say thanks to Adam and Toby for letting me win their December competition.
The prize? Their top 25 marketing books, including their own publication.
Here’s my reading list for the next few months
The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott
Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah
Permission Marketing by Seth Godin
Trust Agents by Chris Brogan
Platform by Michael Hyatt
Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk
The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss
Purple Cow by Seth Godin
Epic Content Marketing by Joe Pulizzi
Youtility by Jay Baer
Jab, Jab, Jab Right Hook by Gary Vaynerchuk
Content Rules by Ann Handley and CC Chapman
The New Experts by Robert Bloom
Content Chemistry by Andy Crestodina
Reality Marketing Revolution by Mike Lieberman and Eric Keiles
Spin Sucks by Gini Dietrich
What’s the Future of Business by Brian Solis
Power Stories by Valerie Khoo
Unknown to Expert by Catriona Pollard
Love At First Site by Jon Hollenberg
microDOMINATION by Trevor Young
Become a Key Person of Influence by Daniel Priestley
The 7-Day Startup by Dan Norris
Engagement from Scratch by Danny Iny
And of course their own book…
25. Web Marketing That Works by Adam Franklin and Toby Jenkins
I’ve no idea how much this competition set them back in terms of book purchases etc. But I do know that Adam and Toby have created something of real value with Bluewire News. If you’re interested to learn from a couple of chaps who’ve done it for themselves, then you can sign up for the newsletter here. I hope you enjoy their content as much as I do.
And here’s a couple of little flipagram thingies I made over lunch using nothing but an iPhone, a pair of scissors and some sticky back plastic.
Blak Labs blog 
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