In March 2021, international leisure travel was a distant memory. We had to make Singapore a top-of-mind destination for when travel safely resumed. To do that, we turned a 64-year-old taxi driver into a Twitch streamer, taking the world on live-streamed tours of Singapore.

He engaged with his virtual passengers, giving them a unique tourist experience, no matter where they were tuning in from. He told fascinating stories, took destination requests, and even strolled through some of his favorite spots in the city-state.

Viewers also experienced Singapore’s vibrant street-food culture and hawker centres, as we stopped by famous restaurants, local food-stalls, and sampled a range of delicious cultural cuisines. Throughout the tours, viewers discovered local hidden gems, historic attractions, and explored Singapore from anywhere in the world.

After a year at home, we invited viewers to visit Singapore via taxi, from anywhere in the world. We turned a taxi into a live-streaming studio, fitted with several cameras, so virtual passengers could see Singapore in person. We gave viewers full control to make detours, request destinations, and vote on where they went next. We let them decide where the taxi went, while chatting with our driver who took them wherever they chose to explore. Just like a real taxi.

Through a dedicated Twitch profile, our taxi driver took the world on a series of unique, 2-hour adventures through Singapore. Viewers learned about Singapore from a local’s perspective, visiting historic landmarks and hidden gems off the beaten track.

The activation was launched with an 8bit-inspired design system, visual identity, and custom typeface. This provided a unique, and most importantly, fresh, platform-relevant look and feel.

Amid Covid, gaming usage was up 75% and video streaming was up 12%. Twitch instantly grew in popularity, with people gravitating towards live-streamed, interactive content. Twitch was the best medium for us to give people a new, interactive way to explore Singapore when they were stuck in their homes.

We used our idea as a call-to-action and teased the tours on social media. We followed this by releasing a :30 launch film, which gave viewers a glimpse of what Singapore had to offer. This drummed up excitement, ultimately inviting them to visit Singapore via taxi, from anywhere in the world.

To get the word out, we leveraged Singapore Tourism Board’s owned social media channels, running :06 and :15 launch films that drove people to the Twitch profile, as did our Twitch banners and social postings. We then continued to re-engage with our audience by posting tour reminders, inviting people to join the stream, and tell the driver where to go.

The live-streams were structured to be a series of four 2-hour adventures through Singapore, prompting our passengers to request destinations and interact with the driver. This led to thousands of comments from viewers, that were responded to by a team of moderators, and the driver himself.

We brought nearly 400,000 individual viewers to Singapore. Viewers watched over 2.5 years of footage, ranking us in the top 0.02% of Twitch channels, and our stream was featured on their homepage. We also brought over 20 thousand simultaneous viewers during our final stream and amassed over 3,000 total chat messages, with people sharing their excitement to eventually visit in person.