​More influencers tapped to promote government schemes

The Straits Times, page B3

Government agencies have turned to online personalities with a wider reach - such as mrbrown - to promote policy initiatives, even as they continue to rely on traditional platforms to engage Singaporeans. But such influencer marketing efforts are primarily aimed at shifting perception or raising awareness of a policy, rather than pushing individuals to take concrete action, said lecturer Wong Pei Wen of NTU’s Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information. She does not think it is a good idea to measure outcomes by giving each influencer a unique link to share in his post as a way of tracking the number of clicks and sign-ups for, say, a SkillsFuture course, as such a hard-sell method could backfire. Dr Rohan Gunaratna, professor of security studies at RSIS, said regular attitude and opinion surveys should be done to monitor if campaigns using influencers are effective in educating people about, say, their role in digital defence.