FairPrice compares Mediacorp Star Awards' red carpet outfits to desserts and donuts

NTUC FairPrice has put a hilarious spin to outfits worn by local celebrities' fashion at last weekend's Star Awards, an award ceremony hosted by Mediacorp for its Chinese TV and radio programmes. In a Facebook and Instagram post, FairPrice compared the outfits of three celebrities (Elvin Ng, Chantelle Ng, and Joel Choo) to similar food and beverages such as a raspberry dessert, donuts and, and local drink iced teh (or tea). The post is also accompanied with the text: "If only there’s a category for most deliciously dressed. Here are our top few picks; who do you think would win?"

In a statement to MARKETING-INTERACTIVE, a spokesperson from FairPrice said the food items featured were inspired by the typical dessert recipe content that it publishes on its social media channels, and the ingredients to make them are available in its stores. "Our iced teh take on Choo is a hat tip to our sister business unit Kopitiam and Foodfare," the spokesperson added. 

FairPrice tongue-in-cheek post, which was done in collaboration with Socialyse, got netizens reeling in laughter with many expressing their amusement with laugh-cry emojis. One netizen on Instagram said all of the social media posts discussing about the Star Awards, FairPrice did it best. In less than 24 hours, FairPrice's post has garnered 834 likes on Instagram and 101 positive reactions on Facebook. FairPrice's spokesperson told MARKETING-INTERACTIVE its post reached a collective 54,000 audiences across both platforms, and 2.6k engagement activities. Additionally, Choo also joined in the fun and asked for a month's supply of kopi (coffee) and teh on Instagram, to which FairPrice complied and sent some over. 

According to a spokesperson from Socialyse, the idea for the social media post comes as it noticed that Elvin’s outfit at the Star Awards was the subject of many online chatter, and it wanted to share its own fun take on the Star Awards, including interesting outfits by other celebrities as well. Meanwhile data from Digimind showed that social mentions around Mediacorp’s Star Awards spiked by more than 2593% on 18 April in Singapore. Among the mentions, 23.4% of social mentions were attributed to the topic of the celebrities' outfits. The topic also drew a larger buzz after the day of the event, with mentions increasing by 34%.

With the post, FairPrice said it wanted to come across as a brand that could have fun with happenings around in consumers' lives, and share in the positive humour with everyone. This is relevant to its core mission of making everything food easy.

Winston Tay, head of social for FairPrice Group, added: "We saw Elvin's suit being compared and thought maybe we could do better than just bandung. Then we thought why not show other Star Awards attendees some love, too? Ultimately we do want to drive the message of food being at the core of everything we do, but beyond that we also know from past experience that when we have fun creating content like this, that fun will carry over to our audience too. If we can make just one person smile positively at what we're doing, it's worth the effort."

Earlier this year, Netflix Singapore also used favourite local drinks to promote its show "Bridgerton" on social media. In an Instagram post, Netflix illustrated each of the main characters in Bridgerton as different teas - a product England is famous for - Singaporeans can find at the kopitiam (coffee shop). The localised marketing stunt included tongue-in-cheek descriptions for the characters. This included comparing Duke Hastings to Teh-O Kosong (tea with no milk and sugar) with the description “a tall, dark, hot glass is exactly what you need to perk you up”, as well as comparing Eloise to Teh Halia (tea with ginger) with the caption “too spicy for you”. 

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