Singapore
Food Festival 2012 has effectively used the 8Ps of marketing to attract more
visitors, provide new innovations and differentiate itself from past events.
Product
Under product, SFF's core product is the experience visitors will receive when visiting the
main program highlights which include the Singapore Food Festival Village,
Catch of the Season @ Sentosa HarbourFront, Seafood Treasures - Tales &
Trails @ Kampong Gelam and Seafood Mela @ Little India. The facilitating
products include the different dishes of food that are prepared at the events
listed above. Such dishes include the official SFF Seafood Platter and the
curry fish heads prepared at Little India. It also includes the services
provided by vendors at the booth, volunteers and staff who runs the show and
the chefs preparing the dishes. Attractive activities such as culinary
demonstrations are also part of facilitating products. The supporting products
of SFF include the list of Fringe events co-organized with partners to
differentiate itself from its competitors, such as Savour 2012. Fringe events
includes the "Sea-food and eat" cooking workshop by celebrity chef
Violet Onn and "Get Fresh by the River" event held at the Central
(clark quay). SFF's augmented products include the atmosphere provided by the
new venue, waterfront promenade at marina bay, which provides a stunning view
of marina bay. Customer participation, another kind of augmented product, was
also made available at SFF 2012. Participants of SFF can sign up for a guided
tour named 'Crave Singapore', which offers guests opportunities to go behind
the scenes of Jurong Fishery Port and trips on river cruises with special
cuisines along the Singapore River.
The different
array of products provided by SFF 2012 showed that a lot of effort have been
made to improve and revitalize itself from SFF 2011, and also from competitor
events such as the World Gourmet Summit 2012 and Savour 2012. SFF, being a
reputable event with a long history of 18 years, is able to hold events of such
big scale. Having so many different variety of events make it possible to
attract more people around the nation and also tourists. The products of SFF
2012 were generally more creative, such as the record breaking - most number of
curry fish heads served at once (Seafood Mela @ Little India), and also appeal
to almost everyone, be it your age, religion, race, preferences or personality.
As compared
to SFF 2011, more core products were available in this year's (2012) festival. There
were four main programs at four different venues, whereas there were only two
main programs for 2011. There were 2 supporting products this year, as compared
to last year where there was only one. In SFF 2012, there was also an official
Seafood Platter dish to celebrate the festival's theme. This is a very special
initiative as through this platter, SFF is able to summarize the event in terms
of taste.
Price
As for Price, the admission to Singapore Food
Festival 2012 is free. The food dishes sold at the food village is considered
affordable and comparable to dishes sold at local food courts. The only dish
that is slightly more expensive is the SFF official seafood platter, which is
priced at S$36.90++.
Place
As for place, Singapore Food Festival 2012 has
several venues, with the main attraction Singapore Food Festival Village at Waterfront
Promenade @ Marina Bay. The venue for any events or festivals is very important
as it is where the products are distributed and it contributes significantly to
the level of satisfaction when customers receive their product. Choosing Waterfront
Promenade @ Marina Bay as the venue for the food village this year is a fresh
idea as it brings people to one of the newest 'hotspot' in Singapore, Marina
Bay. The Marina Promenade is also easily
accessible to tourist attractions such as the Marina Bay Sands, Singapore Flyer
and Gardens by the Bay, thus drawing in many foreign tourists to the festival.
The setting is also suitable for such a big event like the food festival, as it
spreads over 3.5 km. The atmosphere is also very suitable for dining, with the
magnificent skyline of Singapore as backdrop. The waterfront promenade also
features a mysterious mist walk which is designed and crafted to lower the
general environment temperature, lighting and music features and dancing water
jets. These features will beautify the venue and make the whole festival mood
livelier and more captivating.
Besides the
main festival food village at Marina Bay, SFF 2012 also had three other venues
where the other highlight programs (core products) occurred. This adds advantage
to the participant numbers as it diversifies the event to different parts of
the country. The locations were also strategically chosen to fit heritage and
cultural goals. For example, the 'Seafood Treasures, Tails and Trials' which
aims to promote traditional Malay food, is held at Kampong Gelam, commonly
known as the 'Muslim Quarter ' of Singapore.
As compared
to SFF 2011, the venue of SFF 2012 is more strategic and appeals to a larger
crowd as it provides more choices. SFF 2011 is held at Singapore River (Clark
Quay Area) and it might not be the most conducive location as the banks are rather
narrow, causing the possibility of congestion during the peak hours in the
evening and after events or shows. SFF 2011 only had one main highlight venue,
thus restricting more people to attend the event as compared to having four different
venues.
Partnership
Partnership plays an important part to the
success of Singapore Food Festival. SFF 2012, which is organized by SPOC
solutions and Singapore F&B Alliance, was partnered by Singapore Chef's
Association and the Malay Heritage Foundation. The government agency which
supported the event was Singapore Tourism Board, and SFF 2012's main sponsor
was NETS FlashPay. The official sponsors for the event included Carlsberg, the
Central at Clark Quay, Pokka, Resorts World Singapore, Ruiter Far East, Zonin
Singapore and Indian Restaurant Association of Singapore. Singapore Chef’s association partnered the
event by acting as an advisory board, with celebrity Chef Eric Teo being the event’s
consultant. The Malay Heritage foundation partnered by participating manpower
and resources at The Seafood treasures – Tales & Trails event. Singapore
tourism board supported the event by providing publicity and promotion for SFF
2012 on the organization’s main website and tourist offices. Sponsors like
Carlsberg, Zonin and Pokka contributed beverages for the event, while Ruiter
Far East provided the F&B equipment from disposable cutleries to chef
jackets for participating chefs. Resort World Sentosa, besides sponsoring the
event, also participated by coming up with a package which enables visitors to
visit the Maritime Experiential Museum and Typhoon
Theatre followed by a feast at three different buffet points.
As for SFF
2011, it was organized by SPOC solutions, partnered by IRAS, Malay Heritage
Foundation and Singapore Chef Association. The main sponsors are City Gas and
Asahi, and the official sponsors were Lanson Singapore, ZO media, CAMUS, Pepsi,
Yeos, Clark Quay, the Central, Singapore Flyer and Zonin Singapore.
Promotions and communication
Singapore
Food Festival 2012 also focused a great deal on Promotions and communications for the annual event. Like in the
past years, the event started the main event website long before the event
dates so that it can attract people to know more about the activities way
before hand. The SFF 2012 main website was interestingly designed with catchy
graphics. The verbiage used on the website also added excitement to the event
and photos were also provided for viewers to have a better idea of the event.
The main website for the event also included a 'book now' tab where viewers can
pre-book admissions to the food-hunt game at Kampong Gelam, master classes by renowned
chefs and cooking workshops. However, besides the official website, there
doesn't seem to be much promotion around on the internet. There was no official
Singapore Food Festival video in YouTube. There was a Facebook page created
specifically for the event; however it was only initiated at a later date of
July 6, which is one week before the opening of the food village. Thus, the
Facebook page only garnered a surprisingly low 307 'likes'. Although social
media might not be the only way to appeal to the crowd, it is currently one of
the fastest and most effective methods in this tech-savvy generation. Singapore
Food Festival could have expected more visitors, especially youths and young
adults who are always on the web, if they had made better use of online
technology and social media to push their event. Fortunately, Singapore Food
Festival 2012, due to its accumulated reputation through the past years,
received considerable amount of attention from online bloggers and food
websites. Thus, this acts as platform to communicate to the locals and tourist
about the festival. Adding on, there was no official Television advertisement
for SFF 2012. However, there were printed advertisements on newspapers such as
Lian He Zhao Bao and the Straits Time, and also featured in local magazines
like 8 days.
Although
there were publicity efforts made for this event, it is certain that more
promotion, especially through social media, could have been induced to make a
more widespread coverage.
Very similar
to the promotion efforts of 2012, Singapore Food Festival 2011 also lacked
publicity and public communications on the social media.
Programming
Programming was a successful factor which helped
Singapore Food Festival to achieve its goal of attracting more than 500,000
visitors this year. This is because the food festival this year was spread out
to four main highlight venues. They are namely the Singapore Food festival
village @ waterfront promenade at Marina Bay, Catch of the Season at Sentosa
Harbourfront Precinct, Seafood treasures - Tales & Trails @ Kampong Gelam
and Seafood Mela at little India.
The food
village concentrated on the selling and promoting of local and international
seafood dishes, and it boasted more than 50 participating vendors. The food village
concept is similar to that of what it is like in local hawker centers, whereby
it is a free-sitting setting and visitors pay for the food on the spot and precede
to find any seats available. This enabled foreign tourists to experience the
culture of dining in a hawker center thus adding on the 'Singaporean' feel to
the event. The vendors which were present at the food village were all selected
carefully by the organizers to represent Singapore so as to ensure that the
best quality is given. For example, the seafood 'Char Kway Tiao’ was cooked by
vendors from RWS' Malaya Food Street, and the Official Seafood Platter is prepared
by Seafood Paradise, one of Singapore's leading Seafood restaurant.
The
activities at Harbour Front Percent is programmed in a way whereby the whole
area could get involved instead of clustering the activities together at one
location. At harbor front, there were events programmed at 6 different
locations. They were namely Siloso Beach at Sentosa Island, St James power
station, Vivocity waterfront Promenade, Resort World Sentosa (Fiesta and Starz restaurant),
Jewel box at mount Faber and lastly Habour Front centre. Having different highlights spread across the precinct
enabled more people to take part in the event. It also allowed passing
visitors, whom originally have no intentions to take part in the activities, to
join the fun.
The
activities held at Seafood treasures – Tales & Trials at Kampong Gelam were
programmed to give participants chances to interact with each other by involving
them in ways such as the Culinary Adventure, a fun filled food related treasure
hunt whereas participants could visit different attractions and taste different
kinds of food. Besides the treasure hunt, there were also numerous workshops and
classes, some targeting at children. Thus, the events at Kampong Gelam
successfully attracted many families.
The Seafood
Mela at Little India, which is held on the 13th to 14th
of July, showcased a competition where both international and local chef s
compete for the “Best Indian Seafood Chef” title. The competition attracted
many spectators, where many of them participated in the world record attempt to
serve 2012 Curry Fish Heads in a single dinner while enjoying an
international entertainment extravaganza.
SFF 2011 was programmed in way where all the events
were gathered around Clark Quay. Beside the fringe events held at different
properties under Asia Malls, there were no other locations for the highlight
programs. This restricted participation from the public and tourists.
