Singapore Kindness Movement (SKM) Organizational Analysis

Singapore Kindness Movement (SKM), established in 1997, is a non-profit organization that creates public education programs aimed at cultivating and encouraging kindness and graciousness within the Singapore (Kindness, 2019).

Introduction

The vision and mission statement of SKM are geared towards creating a “kinder and gracious Singapore” and its main objectives are to create public awareness for acts of kindness and to influence and raise the standards of behaviour and responsibility among Singaporeans. (Kindness, 2019).

Campaign Analysis

The “Be Greater” campaign was launched in July 2018, the main goal of the campaign is to influence Singaporeans into performing beyond random acts of kindness and to reflect on their own individual character and values (Kindness, 2019).

The title, “Be Greater”, stands to call for its audiences to be a better and greater version of themselves, despite greatness being typically associated with achievements, wealth and power (Kindness, 2019). It calls for its audiences to reflect on their inner character and values such as kindness and perform acts beyond than interest of oneself, which leaves a long-lasting impact.

It has shown that this form of greatness is a mantle that anyone can assume; regardless of the social group they belong to (Kindness, 2019).

SKM’s “Be Greater” campaign was launched in several stages, with the initial stages more heavily focused on traditional advertising strategies and the later stages more focused on social media advertising strategies in order to maximise their reach and retain existing audiences.

In its initial stages, SKM’s employs traditional advertising strategies such as advertisements. These ads are screened in cinemas, television and cable throughout the entire month of July; creating exposure for their campaign (Kindness, 2019).

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Print ads and outdoor ads are also placed on buses, train stations and major publications; these ads will feature real-life individuals who personify the campaign’s message – relating to their audiences on a much more personal level (Kindness, 2019). SKM has also collaborated with Starbucks Singapore, turning its Raffles City outlet into a Kindness Café throughout August 2018 (Liew, 2018). The café was decorated with kindness quotes and reminders, creating an atmosphere within the store and exclusive campaign merchandise were also sold there (Liew, 2018).

In its later stages, SKM employed social media advertising strategies such as the use of hashtag. With its hashtag, #BeGreaterSG, SKM has engaged its audience through their various social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, to encourage its audience to drop a hashtag on their pictures, had they arrived at any Kindness platforms (Kindness, 2019). SKM has also engaged its audiences by posting content relating to kindness, such as motivational quotes or video highlights of everyday individuals and has always employed their hashtag on their post; further promoting their campaign and raising exposure. Additionally, SKM has also engaged social media influencers to represent their campaign, such as Fandi Ahmad and Michelle Wong. Both influencers have a large follower base and SKM can leverage on their follower base along with their personal image to make them the walking ambassadors of the campaign (Kindness, 2019).

Strategies Purpose

Traditional advertising is implemented at the initial stages for exposure purposes, social media advertising in brought in by SKM at a later stage with intents of influencing call to action – to encourage their target audience to perform more acts of kindness.

SKM’s Instagram content is primed on educating their users, by posting questions on kindness and captioned with encouragement. The intent is to challenge the audience into reflecting how they can incorporate kindness into their daily routine since kind acts do not need to be large, with hopes that It can influence as many of their audience into starting small.

However, SKM’s Facebook content mainly focuses demonstrating kindness through sharing articles of kindness, SKM related events and video highlights of ordinary individuals. By referring to accounts of other individual’s success in incorporating kindness, SKM hopes to not only show that it is achievable but at the same time connect with their audience on a personal level. While the content seems to be of wide array on its Facebook page, the main purpose of SKM’s Facebook content does not differ from its campaign’s purpose – to educate and encourage behaviour of kindness.

Target Audience and Segmentation

SKM’s target audience for their “Be Greater” campaign would be the Aware public. Kindness as a trait or value is something of common knowledge that everyone is aware of. While treating others with kindness is seen as a given act, yet no one performs them actively. Through this campaign, SKM intends to appeal towards aware publics who are conscious of kindness as a trait but does not act on it due to various reasons; hoping to form a connection with them by correcting their mindset and encouraging them to be more involved.

With its audience being aware public, SKM uses psychographic segmentation strategies in order to reach their audience. With aware audiences being conscious of kindness as a trait but unwilling to act on it, it serves as an attitude or mindset issue. SKM intends to reach out to these audiences and changing their mindset by inspiring them through providing exposure of kindness acts which are relatable to the audience. SKM’s Facebook and Instagram platform regularly shares highlight videos of ordinary people performing acts of kindness; it is a platform which promotes the visibility of kind acts and SKM hopes that it will inspire like-minded people to take action (Manjur, 2014). By sharing relevant videos, viewers can learn how they can do their part by taking manageable and meaningful actions (Chisholm, n.d.). SKM appropriately uses Facebook and Instagram as platforms to constantly remind the relative ease of achieving acts of kindness, SKM hopes that it will eventually persuade them to take action.

In terms of traditional advertising strategies, SKM leverages on its influencers to reach psychographic segmentation. SKM segments their target audience based on lifestyle and interests, therefore they engage influencers who share hold authority in these aspects to reach their following, examples of such influencers are Fandi Ahmad and Michelle Wong. Since influencers hold authority thus when they endorse or speak strongly of a brand, their followers take notice and share it with their networks; raising awareness and trust for their cause (Alameda, 2019). Aside from the audience following, SKM hopes to leverage on their influencer’s personal branding to develop trust for their campaign and platforms, which can help to strengthen their brand position over time.

Communication Theory and Social Media Usage

Pertaining to SKM’s use of social media for their campaign, the communication theory which closely resembles SKM’s use of social media would be Grunig & Hunt’s (1984) Model of Public Relations -the two-way asymmetrical model.

In the two-way asymmetrical model, it revolves around the use of persuasion and manipulation to influence its audience to behave in certain manner the organisation deems desirable. Similarly, SKM’s use of social media in the “Be Greater” campaign aims to influence and encourage its aware public through its social media platforms to perform acts of kindness in a more proactive manner; these are actions deemed desirable by SKM. The use of persuasion techniques is also demonstrated through SKM’s content sharing and engagement on both Facebook and Instagram, all of which bears similarities to the theory.

However, there is a distinct difference between the two-way asymmetrical model theory and SKM’s social media usage. In the two-way asymmetrical model, no research is done to find out how stakeholders feel about organisation. While SKM does not directly conduct research to find out how their audience perceive the organization, SKM indirectly collects feedback on their organization based off the impact of their initiatives though the annual Graciousness survey. The annual Graciousness survey provides behavioural insights and indicators on graciousness and kindness in Singapore; it is a form of feedback from its stakeholders, the audience, communicating back to SKM to review on their effectiveness of their initiatives through concrete results (Tiah, 2019). While the use of survey does not coincide with the two-way asymmetrical model theory, it provides valuable feedback to the organisation.

Lessons Learnt and Group Project Relations

For my group project, my group would be working on a social media campaign to sustain HaiDiLao’s market share within the industry. Based on my learnings from the SKM’s actions as a non-profit organization, it is evident traditional advertising strategies alone will not suffice in retaining their audience. Social media advertising strategies are used to retain and engage audience, while traditional advertising strategies are used for exposure purposes of their campaign.

In the case of HaiDiLao, while their reputation as one of the top hotpot brands in Singapore is built via word-of-mouth and social media content sharing from customers, but due to low barriers of entry within the hotpot industry, there are increasing number of hotpot shops emerging. Word-of-mouth and content sharing by users will not suffice in sustaining their market share in the industry. HaiDiLao will need to actively engage its audience to create a greater top-of-mind awareness as the go-to hotpot brand within Singapore.