Bro bro bro! Shiok ah!
Not sure if you’ve noticed, but recently, we’ve had two commercials come out of STB and NEA, of which both TVCs are made up of entirely, 1 word.
STB just launched a new tvc, where they tell us and foreigners what’s “shiok” in Singapore. And with that, we see montages of different activities, punctuated by the words “Shiok”, uttered in as many different intonations as possible. A shout of triumph, a whisper of awe, and everything in between.
Then we have NEA launching an awareness campaign to alert smokers of no smoking zones such as common areas of all residential buildings, within 5 metres of bus shelters etc. The tagline is “Don’t let your bros get fined”. The various TVCs show a man about to light up at one of these zones, and a friendly, albeit creepy, bro, starts trying to warn his friend. By shouting “Bro” incessantly, and frantically pointing to a warning sign about being fined.
I think this signals a larger conspiracy theory behind it all.
Were all our copywriters and scriptwriters in the advertising agencies kidnapped somehow? And someone wants it covered up?
Incidentally, I think both campaigns were done by BBH APAC. So yeah. There’s definitely something going on with their copy department. OR an internal bet with huge stakes is being played.