To tell a heartwarming story that shows how Singapore Airlines brings you closer to the ones you love.

The Magic Pen tells the story of a little boy who thinks he has found a magic pen. When the pen fails to bring back his father from a long business trip, the boy is saddened. In the end, the true magic happens when Singapore Airlines helps the father return home earlier to surprise his son.

Character design was, for us, one of the most important stages of pre-production. It can be compared with the casting process of a live-action film – choosing the perfect actor or talent.

Another thing was – we have also realised that in a live-action film, the characters are almost pre-designed where you are able to alter the wardrobe, hairstyle and sometimes even physique to suit the story. Unlike animation, we have the particularity that we have absolute control of creating everything from scratch about the character.

The animated short film is three minutes long and it was placed on multiple platforms including YouTube and Facebook as well as on KrisWorld – the airline’s inflight entertainment system.

Overall, the Magic Pen film has been viewed over 17 million times to date, garnering more than 300,000 likes, and 50,000 Facebook shares, 650% more than the SIA norm. The film also resulted in a 40% uplift in positive sentiments and a 50% increase in brand mentions during the campaign period. Due to the high share rate of the work, the campaign also delivered 56.6 million impressions, triple of what was guaranteed by the media budget. After watching the film, viewers had a strong emotional response and associated many positive brand values with SIA, triggering warmth (28% vs 7%), happiness (23% vs 8%) and authenticity (86% vs 78%), well above the Singaporean average.