Watsons Singapore launches integrated campaign to celebrate brand revamp

This Singapore edition of campaign is part of a new regional initiative, called the 'Wow' campaign, where the company introduced a new logo design, packaging and uniform.

The new logo features a 'youthfu'l font, without its usual slogan “Personal Care Stores”, reflecting the company’s evolving direction toward encompassing a wider range of products. It was designed by London-based Wham.

Meanwhile, all the nine Asian countries involved—Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, The Philippines, Korea and Indonesia—will roll out separate marketing activities.

Micheas Chan, marketing and merchandising director at Watsons Singapore, said the brand revamp work started in September and included the refurbishment of stores.

“We are refreshing the brand for the hardware to catch up with the software,” he told Campaign Asia-Pacific. “Activation and marketing activities started since end March and will be run for seven weeks to celebrate the works.”

In Singapore, Watsons organized flash mobs at three locations, namely Ngee Ann City Orchard, Bugis and Raffles Place, on 1 April. Its activations also included push carts to give out hard candy, balloons and crowns, as well as golden tickets worth $250 to be won.

The flash mob activities will be edited into a video for the brand's YouTube channel, which will be launched by early May. The launch on YouTube, Chan said, marks the importance of digital in the company's communications with consumers. Watsons Singapore is currently on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

There is also an on-going dance competition, targeting students from secondary institutions and above, where Watsons invites students to create a dance with the 'wow' factor and produce a video for submission. These videos will be put on the YouTube channel as well.

In tandem with the campaign, Watsons Singapore is running an online game, similar to that of Candy Crush, on its Facebook page to allow consumers to win a Samsung S4 as well as travel vouchers. It has 120,000 Facebook fans, making it the 23rd largest community in the country.

Watsons also has an outdoor campaign on buses.

Watsons is working with creative agency Orbital Group, media agency OMD Singapore, PR agency Huntington Communications and digital agency One9Ninety for the campaign, with the tagline of 'At Watsons, there’s always more'.

“We are doing something people don’t expect Watsons will do, and we are celebrating the new Watsons without leaving our heritage,” Chan said. “The concept came from the word ‘wow’ and we got all the agencies together to brainstorm ideas that can ‘wow’ our audiences.”

Watsons has been in Singapore for 25 years and currently has 112 stores nationwide. In a survey conducted last month by Nielsen, Watsons has been voted the number one health and beauty store in the country.

Going forward, Chan noted that the brand's membership programme will continue to be its key marketing strategy. It currently has 620,000 members in Singapore, of which 90 per cent are female. Members spend twice as much as non-members.

"We want to recruit more members and get them to tick to us," he said. "We provide benefits for them and we can tailor promotions and be more targeted."