Singapore Arts Festival 2012

(whiteboardjournal.com)

Background:

The Singapore Arts Festival has started since 1977 and is organised by the National Arts Council, which is held every year. The festival features theatre arts, dance, music and visual arts. Also both local participants and international performers have put up the events. This year’s theme was ‘Our Lost Poems’ where it is related to myths, legends and tales, with the idea to inspire.

After reading a news article on the Singapore Arts Festival (Singapore Arts Festival promises a visual feast, 2012), I had a very high expectation on the event. It was because the news stated that ‘with more than 300 free performances, there’s something for everyone…’ hence I thought this will be an enormous arts festival where one day will not be enough to experience the whole event. Also, I was very looking forward to the festival as I have hardly attended a proper arts festival before.

In addition, because the whole theme of the event was on myths and legends, I was very excited to experience the whole feel of the theme. And I also wondered how they would come up with events to give the audience the feel of ‘myths and legends’.

Marketing Mix:

There are 8 components in the marketing mix – product, place, partnership, promotion, programming, people, packaging and price.

Product:

A product is anything that can be offered to a market for attention, acquisition, use or consumption that may satisfy customer’s wants or needs.

There are total of 4 levels of product – core product, facilitating product, supporting product and augmented product.

Firstly, core product refers to what the buyer is really buying. The Singapore Arts Festival’s core product is for the appreciation of arts and culture, as well as to experience, gain knowledge to know more about the festival that has to offer.

Secondly, facilitating product refers to good or services that must be present for the guest to use the core product. The facilitating product for the Singapore Arts Festival is the different type of events, theatres, music, dance and performances to let the audience experience this year’s theme – ‘Our Lost Poems’

I feel that the Singapore Arts Festival has done a great job in coming up with wonderful performances such as ‘The Young Ones! Performance Showcase’, 'Bridge Cafe Project’ and the ‘Flux’.

(The Young Ones! Performance Showcase)

(singaporeartsfest.com, The Flux)

(comesingapore.com, The Flux)

Especially the ‘Flux’, I thought it was a unique idea to perform with horses and I felt it definitely matched the whole event’s theme, as it gave the sense of myths and legends.

Thirdly, supporting product refers to products offered to add value to the core product. The event’s supporting product is the Bridge Café Project. It is a performance that engages the audience by dancing along the songs at the Cold Stone Creamery shop. It is a unique performance, which is differentiated from other festivals because the show is done by a group of seniors.

Lastly, the augmented product includes accessibility and atmosphere etc. The whole event was easily accessible by wheelchairs. Hence, this allowed even wheelchair bounds to experience the festival.

The whole event’s atmosphere was enhanced with the lighting and enthusiasm of the people involved in the event itself. The lightings were decorated with fairy lightings and dim-lightings to make a dreamy ambiance. Also, the people who were engaged in the event were very passionate and excited about the performances to bring up the mood of the whole experience.

Place:

The Singapore Arts Festival was held at the Festival Village, Esplanade Park. It can be seen that the place is right next to the Esplanade and there are many means of transport to reach the place. For example, there are Mass Rapid Transport (MRT), bus or taxi. Also, the Festival Village is a walking distance from the Esplanade MRT station; hence it would be very convenient and easy to reach. Also the Esplanade Park is located in the central area of Singapore, hence it will attract more visitors to the place.

In addition, there are various types of exhibitions and theatres held at the Esplanade, hence the visitors are able to enjoy and visit the Esplanade before or after attending the Singapore Arts Festival. The map below shows the location of the Festival Village at Esplanade Park. And also can be noticed that the village is located quite near the Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay.

Lastly, it can attract tourists as those who purchase the City Sightseeing Package or Original Tour Package as the ‘hop-on’ buses will stop at the Festival Village. Hence tourists can drop by to join the festival as well.

(singaporeartsfest.com)

Price:

The price of different events varies, for instance, there are events that are free and some events can cost up to $100 for the Vertical Road and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. However, there were many performances, which their tickets were affordable. For example, Dance/Film only costs $12, Advanced Studies in … (Ten Lessons For Life) costs $18.

The performances I have attended were free. Such performances included World of Stories, Flux and Bridge Café Project. I felt that by making it free entrance, it allowed everyone to enjoy without having to pay for it.

Also, the Public Garden Flea Market, there were different items sold. I felt that those items sold were all related to the arts and culture. For example, the booths were all decorated nicely to suit the theme of the products they were selling. Also, they were selling items such as handicraft bags, books and soft toys etc.

The prices of the products sold at the flea market had a wide range from $2 to $100+. I felt that it was good idea to open a flea market during the event because it can attract people who are interested in arts and culture, but in fashion too. There were a number of stalls where they imported the new arrivals of apparels to attract customers.

 Promotion:

Relating to the price of tickets, the Singapore Arts Festival has come up with different sales promotional methods to attract visitors. For example, there were ‘Pre-Sales’ from 15^th to 18^th March, where the 30% discount off tickets for 2 or more performances and 10% off for a single performance. Also, there was an ‘Early Bird Sales’ from 19^th March to 15 April, which allowed 20% off discount when purchasing for 2 or more performances and 10% discount off for single show purchases.

I felt that by doing this sales promotion, it actually attracts people to purchase tickets for more than one performance, as they will find it cheaper to purchase tickets for more performances.

I feel that promotion is a strong factor to raise awareness of the event and drawing people to attend the festival. The Singapore Arts Festival has promoted itself through the Arts Festival official website, social media, brochures and banners. From the website, you can see how they have listed down the various activities and events held in each day. Also, the website describes about those highlights of the event through uploading videos. Hence, when people watch the videos, they will have a better knowledge of the event and would want to come down to the event to experience it personally.

(singaporeartsfest.com)

I felt that it was a good idea to use the method of social media as most of the people are connected to the social networking sites and it will be an easy method to spread information about the event. Also, you can see the tweets people tweeted about the Singapore Arts Festival at its official website.

Lastly, there were banners hung around the Festival Village to attract the people who were nearby the area and also, there were many advertisements of the event along the Esplanade MRT link. Brochures were given out at the event itself, which contained detailed information about different types of events held during the Singapore Arts Festival.

Partnership:

The Singapore Arts Festival has partnerships with various companies and agencies in terms of sponsorship and producing promotions. As you can see below, the picture shows the various partners and sponsors.

(singaporeartsfest.com)

For the Singapore Tourism Board, it is benefited through political and economic attributes. For instance, through political, the Singapore Arts Festival is one of the hallmark events that happen yearly and its aim is to shape arts and culture into Singapore. Hence, by being the partner of the festival, it helps to position the country into a place where experiencing arts and culture is easily accessible. Through economic, the festival attracts tourists from regional countries to participate in the event, because there are artists from different parts of the world coming together to open an event like this. Hence, be it the participants or visitors from foreign countries, they will spend in Singapore and this will create revenue to the country.

Programming:

After going down to the festival, I realised that there were different events held for basically every one of different age groups. For example, there were Kids Arts Village, where the children get to explore art in a fun way. There was Tangle, which is a Polyglot Theatre, it is a playground where there are lots of strings connected to many poles and the strings are tangled. Also, there was Splash Art and Craft, where children get to make handicrafts and paintings. These activities cater to kids up to 12 years old.

I felt that it was a good idea to have separate programmes for kids, as it will widen the visitor ship of the Singapore Arts Festival.

(culturepush.com)

For youths, there was the FFF Girl DJ Block Party. The whole party was about a group of female DJs, where they do different types of deejaying with different types of genres such as disco classics to classical-themed and Bollywood-inspired tunes. I felt that youths nowadays have a great interest in music and entertainment and I thought this event was an excellent idea to bring all the youths together and enjoy the event.

(singaporeartsfest.com)

For adults and seniors, there are events such as ‘End of the Road’ and ‘An Umbrella for 2’. The ‘End of the Road’ is a concert where seniors sing rock and roll genre, songs by legendary bands and iconic musicians such as Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Velvet Underground, Bon Jovi and Bob Dylan. ‘An Umbrella for 2’ is a walk where 2 people share an umbrella and they are equipped with an MP3 player. The 2 people will take a ‘sound walk’ and as they walk along a designated path and hear different types of sound.

This will actually help the adult couples to have a moment together and enjoy the different background sounds of the surroundings.

Difference between this year and last year:

The main differences between last year’s and this year’s is the theme and the programmes held during the events.

The theme of the event last year was ‘I Want to Remember’, which was connected to this year’s theme ‘Our Lost Poems’. Last year’s theme aimed to recall back our memories and past that we created, because of our very fast-paced society, Singapore. Due to the fact that we live in a very fast-paced lives, we do not find any importance in keeping our memories we have had. Therefore, the main target of last year’s theme was to recollect our lost precious memories.

However, this year’s theme is more concentrated on the feel of nostalgia to retrieve back the sense of personal identity by looking back at our past stories, myths and legends. Therefore, in conclusion, 2011’s theme was intended to find our lost memories and 2012’s theme is for us to value and relate with the past memories.

Next, the programmes were related to the theme, which were related to people’s past. For instance, the festival had a Heritage Journey by Singapore Chinese Orchestra to celebrate a classic musical style called ‘Nanyin’. Therefore, people who come from the Hokkien dialect background, they will find it relevant as it is part of their memories and pasts. Also, the ‘When A Gray Taiwanese Cow Stretched’ was one of the highlights during the last year’s event. It was a festival, which combines cultural, social and aesthetic histories of people who lived along the edge of the Pacific Ocean.

However, this year’s programmes such as the ‘A Tribute to Feng Fei Fei’ was relevant to the older generations and seniors as they grew up with her and when they actually go for the performance, this will help them to revisit the past.

Overall, I feel that the festival has done an excellent job in coming up with themes that relates between years with appropriate programmes.

Unavailable Market:

I feel that the unavailable market refers to the youths, young adults and teenagers. The reason why the Singapore Arts Festival could not reach out to many youths is due to the lack of advertising to various schools of different levels – primary, secondary, poly technique, junior college and university. Also, it can be due to the fact that not all the teenagers are appealed to the whole Arts Festival because not all the teenagers can be interested in the area of arts and culture.

Hence, I feel that the festival should improve on the promotion part by using more of social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. It is because teenagers frequently visit these websites and I feel that we can raise awareness of the Singapore Arts Festival through the social networking sites.

Also, there is an increase of interests in music and entertainment by the teenagers nowadays. Hence, I feel that the Singapore Arts Festival can include more of local band performances into one of the performances and involve more of music and entertainment parts into the whole event. Lastly, the festival can improve on itself by coming up with new events that even people who do not appreciate arts can enjoy as well.

Conclusion:

I believe that in overall, the whole event went very well. It was much better than my expectations and I even developed a new interest in the different performances of the Singapore Arts Festival. I will definitely make a visit down to the festival when it opens again next year and I will be very looking forward to it. If I did not do an assignment on the festival, I would have not known anything about this entire event. I felt that through this assignment, I have gained a lot of knowledge on it. 

The video above shows the overview of the Singapore Arts Festival 2012.