Hub is a key word

I was flipping through the papers over the weekend, when an article about Singapore’s upcoming attempt to rebrand itself caught my eye.

Realising it has one too many branding taglines, the search is now on for an agency that can come up with an overarching branding strategy that can encompass us wanting to be the hub of everything: in the air and sea, for telecommunications, BTMICE, financial, medicine, life sciences, retail, healthcare, technology, education…. The list goes on and on. All you have to do is google “Singapore, hub” and look at the results returned.

In any case, the appointed agency is to come up with an umbrella positioning that will serve as a guide for all Singapore agencies in their future marketing campaigns. Before, each government agency used to came up with their own branding of Singapore, which is being put down as the reason for the country’s current fragmented image.

In Saturday’s article, the writer rightly commented the inherent problem with the current branding tagline, which is “Uniquely Singapore”, is that it lacks an emotional resonance as the definition of unique differs from person to person. Just based on the above factors, I can’t help but think a huge task lies ahead for the branding agency tasked with this job: to come out with a branding campaign that will resonate emotionally, but be general and flexible enough to be adapted into each individual government agency’s campaign. So we’d like to throw this open to you: using the word ‘hub’, what suggestions have you for Singapore’s new umbrella brand?