Marketing lessons to be learnt from the success of Singapore

Create a “pull” with differentiation

As I mentioned in my last post , Singapore is such a small country in the middle of the Indian Ocean and yet it has gone on to become one of the richest nations with one of the highest per capita incomes. One of the things that I emphasised, in the last post, was how Singapore has leveraged its assets.

This time I will talk about how it has gone about creating differentiation for itself, one of the key attributes for success in marketing.

To ensure that tourists keep coming into the country, you have to keep coming up with things that are not available in the vicinity, so if tourists need to see that thing, they have to come to Singapore only.

Let me take my example only. As I had mentioned, in my last post, I had been going frequently to Singapore and yet this time when I went, I had found, so many things had changed. One of the things that I wanted to visit , was the Universal Studios at Sentosa. Reason. We don’t have a Universal Studios showcase and rides anywhere close to India. I would have to go to Los Angeles in the US, to show my family, the Universal Studios. For me, with Singapore, Universal Studios was in my neighbourhood. So it made sense for me to go to Singapore. 3 tourists got added. Similarly there is the F1 race track. The Lego museum etc.

There was a time that there was the Night Safari and the bird park, the aquarium etc. in Singapore. But a lot of countries, now have these attractions and if you have visited the aquarium in HongKong or Toronto, you may not find this very different. So to ensure that there is something different for the tourist to see, they have the Universal, the Marina Bay attractions etc.

Can you imagine creating a whole zone for fans of the movie Avatar. At the Marina Bay, they have created the zone. Even people who have not watched the movie Avatar and knows about their characters, tend to go there, just because everyone else has talked so much about it. No where else will you get this creation

There are a lot of small nations in the Indian Ocean, but none of them , has anything which can get me to visit them. Singapore has created the differentiation by bringing in so many tourist attractions at one place, that people find it convenient to go there. Indonesia/Bali have natural beauty, Thailand has beaches, but so many entertainment points at one location, that’s only in Singapore.

Now if you add, the English speaking population and the absolutely secure environment that the country provides to tourists, it makes for a default destination to visit.

In marketing, people will keep coming up with me-too items to reduce your advantage. If you have to sustain your competitive advantage, you need to keep coming up with ways to show ho you’re different from the competition. If you can differentiate clearly, in the eyes of the customer, you have a “winner” on your hands.

Till next time then.

Succeed by differentiating.

Carpe Diem!!!

Marketing lessons to learn from the success of Singapore

Leverage, Marketing

LEVERAGE YOUR ASSETS

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!!!

Recently I visited Singapore with my family. I used to visit Singapore on office work, very frequently, during the years 2000-2005, but I had not visited it since 2005. This visit was therefore close to 18-19 years since my last visit. During those years, what a way Singapore has changed. I was viewing Singapore as if I had come there for the first time. Except for may be the Orchard Road, Little India, China Town and the Night Safari, everything else, seemed new to me.

This made me all the more curious. Singapore has over the years gone on to become one of the richest countries in the world with a GDP per capita of $82000/ – which is way more than the GDP per capita of $57000/- about a decade ago. And this is despite the fact that Covid had taken a big toll on the tourism industry in Singapore.Last year about 6.3 million international tourists had arrived in the country – which is roughly same as the population of the country. This is much better than 2021 but much lower when you compare it with the numbers in 2013 onwards. At that time they would get almost 2-3 times this number according to the website Statista.

Now if f you look at Singapore’s geography, they are an extremely small country. They are right in the middle of the Indian Ocean with other nations like Indonesia, Malaysia surrounding it. Yet it is the most developed country in that region.

Services contribute a major portion of the revenue of the nation – but within those, in my opinion it is

Trade
Global finance &
Tourism .

This is where I think the actual study comes in. I am not sure if there’s a thought to the process, but Singapore has made its so called weaknesses as its strengths. It is continuously upping the ante on its competitors by leveraging on the resources that it has.

Let’s start with the first item – Trade.

Singapore is one of the busiest ports in the world. They have taken advantage of their position in the middle of the Indian Ocean to ensure, that they are the hub for all the ships moving to&fro between Europe, Africa and Asia towards, Japan, China, Korea and Australia/New Zealand. They have ensured that they continuously upgrade their technology and machinery so that they have the most efficient ship handling facilities in the region such that there is a quick movement within the port.

Even the Changi airport is the 5th busiest airport in the world. With most people/goods wanting to go towards Australia , New Zealand, Philipines from India etc. preferring to stopover or take a connection via Singapore. The airport itself has been made so efficient that inspite of being such a busy airport, you never have a feeling of being rushed, because of crowds.

Now lets look at the second item – Global Finance

Singapore has the most well articulated legal system and very stable laws. Any finance organisation looks for stability and rule of law. So even though it’s a very small country a lot of the finance activity that takes place in the ASEAN and South East Asian region, happens out of Singapore. There was a time when Hong Kong had (that time as a British colony) a lot of finance industry, but since Hong Kong has merged with China, a lot of the finance industry prefers to operate out of Singapore. The other advantage because of its location is that, the time difference between all the nations in the Asia Pacific region and South East Asia is not more than 3-4 hours. Which means that people in all the countries can coordinate with their offices in Singapore in almost real time. Again leveraging its location.

And finally the third item – Tourism

Tourism is a big-time employer. Whether it’s hotels, eateries, momentos, taxis, it creates jobs all across. With more 6 million tourists that visited last year, it is almost the same as the population of Singapore. But to ensure that tourists keep coming year after year, Singapore has had to reinvent itself continuously. Since it doesn’t have a very old history – say like India – or mountain ranges like say Switzerland, Singapore has to keep doing things within its limited area to get in tourists by the hoards. All the children who visited Singapore in the 80s and 90s remember Sentosa island. So now they have added Universal Studio, Madame Tussaud’s and more to all the activities that existed at Sentosa. For me therefore, it was a completely new experience visiting Sentosa.

Tourism also needs, safety of the travellers. Singapore excels in that. And now if you add the efficiency of the airport, which can bring in millions of passengers, you have each strength playing into another.

In subsequent posts, I will dissect the tourism, part further and how its such an amazing marketing case study.

Till then….

Carpe Diem!!!

Can-Do

mindset, possibility thinking, problem solving

The first international foray that I was personally involved with was into Singapore. The OEM partner (the elephant that we chose to ride at that time) that we used to work with had their regional headquarters in Singapore. The India geography was part of South Asia which used to be clubbed with ASEAN at that time.

While we had our own operation in the US also, this was the first international operation which would be handled out of India. Eventually we were able to execute business in 11 countries out of India.

The various people whom I met in our partner’s office were nice and helpful. However there was one lady who I remember even today because of a phrase she used “CAN-DO”. She was responsible for the business from Singapore for our partner.

I remember we were both in the car and she was explaining the challenges that they face while doing Implementation and asked me questions on various scenarios and how we would handle such situations since we were based out of India. After I had answered all the situations honestly she just mentioned ” I like your CAN-DO attitude “. We eventually went on to do business in Singapore and all the other ASEAN countries for years.

I have always tried to find solutions with whatever I have – quite often I have failed, but a lot of times I have succeeded spectacularly but no one had given this attitude of mine a name. This possibility thinking has got me a lot of rewards.

Now when people try to keep show casing all the reasons why a problem can’t be solved, I use the same term and ask them to learn to get a “CAN-DO” attitude.

Till next time then …. “CAN-DO”

Carpe Diem!!!