Singapore’s Biggest Water Sports Festival: Making Even Bigger Waves With The Sea Games

“The DBS Marina Regatta 2015 event impressed the jury with its conceptualisation, strategy and overall results. The fourth edition of the dragon boating competition and water sports festival attracted about 24,000 attendees over three consecutive weekends. This year grew on the successes of previous editions under the theme of “Ignite the bay!” and lived up to its position as “Singapore’s biggest water sports festival” with sensory experiences, offline-online integration, art installations and many activations on land as well as the water races to increase awareness of water sports in Singapore beyond just the dragon boating community.”

– Marketing Interactive Awards on DBS Marina Regatta 2015 winning gold at Best Home-Grown Event and Best Venue Experience

May-June, 2015
Client: DBS Bank

What was special about Marina Regatta 2015, was its conjunction with the Sea Games – held in Singapore after 20 over years. Leveraging on the Games opened up a huge vista in terms of visibility and outreach that went well beyond the regatta. Drawing a new spool of audiences meant that the Regatta had to ensure it catered to more interests, while maintaining the integrity of its water sports theme.

Through the innovative transposition of the water sports theme onto land, both the theme and outreach of the event were strengthened

The result was the creation of Singapore’s first ever urban beach, nestled in the middle of a financial district. Over one whole weekend, families and water enthusiasts dove into lifestyle water-based activities like stand up paddling, paddle board yoga, zorbing, and remote control boat racing.

The offline-online integration was an important part of pulling together the media coverage we aimed to achieve. On top of the common (but powerful) applications of creating a microsite and facebook page, we targeted today’s content creators: Singapore’s community of lifestyle bloggers. We created 2 media centers in order for influencers to make it their home over the 3 weekends, so that they became live content creators that could immediately generate their social experience.