Mentos believes in illuminating the everyday with fresh thinking. The brand has had much recent success in proposing offbeat solutions to everyday problems. In Singapore, the nation’s birthday celebration, National Day, eclipses all other national events. As expected, this annual celebration comes with all of the trappings of a big birthday party; parades with tanks, fireworks, long speeches, and of course, a new birthday song each year. This all takes place at the National Day Parade, otherwise known as the NDP. The birthday song has become quite a famous part of the Nation’s celebrations, unfortunately not always for the right reasons.

In 2013 Mentos released an alternative National Day Song to capitalise on Singaporeans’ light hearted view of the government produced anthem. It was called the National Day Proposal, or, the NDP. The unofficial NDP, of course. The song suggested a novel approach to a serious national issue – overcrowding and lack of space in the world’s smallest city state. The strategy was too in fact propose marriage to a nation with lots of space – Finland. And since both countries had high education systems and could neutralise each other’s weather (too cold in Finland, come to Singapore, too hot in Singapore, come to Finland), it seemed like the perfect match. And it was. The PR garnered was a roaring success as no one had heard of a country marrying another one. By leveraging bilateral ties, Mentos was seen as the alternative solution provider to Singapore’s national issue. And perhaps a matchmaker too.

The goals and objectives of the campaign we set were:

1. Drive reach of the National Day Proposal message?.

2. Delver views.

?3. Drive positive sentiment vs. the current official National Day Song.

4. Spark a debate.

?5. Promote and drive sales of Mentos ‘I <3 SG’ National Day edition packs.

?6. Make steps toward building an enduring brand platform for Mentos.

1. Reach:? The National Day Proposal campaign reached half of Singapore’s entire Facebook population with a reach of 1.15 million people.

?2. Views:? The film was viewed more than 190,000 times (through YouTube, SGAG and Yahoo) in 9 days – more than triple the number of a similar local brand Starhub campaign which achieved 53,322 views.

?3. Sentiment: ?Positive feedback was over 180% better than the sentiment for the current official National Day Song.

4. Debate:? Mentioned in 5,695 comments across the period (plus an unspecified number of 3rd party Facebook conversations), and covered by 85 different media outlets whom delivered a PR value of over half a million SGD.?

5. Sales: ?Delivered a sales index of 112 vs. non-campaign periods.

?6. Make steps toward building an enduring brand platform: ?Many of our viewers, bloggers and media recalled and spontaneously mentioned last year’s National Night campaign in the numerous social conversations that were ignited by this year’s National Day Proposal campaign.

This year’s National Day Song was a proposal... a wedding proposal... to a country with lots of space... Finland. It was an imaginative, tongue in cheek and slightly daft suggestion to a rather sticky and sweaty national issue. The song and music video was propagated across the island online and through social platforms and was watched and shared by hundreds of thousands of Singaporeans (and highly amused Finns!) Its purpose was to highlight this increasingly discussed problem in a non-confrontational way, and spark chatter about fresh and novel ways that Singapore might meet its space needs in the future.

Mentos believes in illuminating the everyday with a blast of fresh thinking, proposing rather unique solutions to everyday problems around the world. Singapore, being the world’s smallest city-state, was facing an overcrowding and lack of space problem. At the same time, the country’s birthday, National Day, was coming up. So Mentos saw the opportunity to leverage national pride as a means to address and provide a fresh solution to tackle the space issue, and at the same time, promote and drive sales of Mentos ‘I <3 SG’ National Day edition packs.

The song was launched as a music video with influential Singaporeans and Finns in Singapore, who were sent cheeky quotes from the song to wear on their chests, to post on their blogs and to pin up on walls (concrete ones... imagine that). ?Very quickly pockets of viewers, embassy staff, consumer groups and even an airline had watched, laughed at and shared the film which we pushed further through extensive blogger interactions, video platforms, the twitter and also on Facebook.