In the recently concluded World Effie Festival, Singapore’s Minister Mentor, Lee Kuan Yew gave an insight on his strategy for Singapore when he was the Prime Minister.

The World Effie Festival, held on 28th and 29th February 2008 in Singapore is a world’s first “global celebration of creative effectiveness, where the brightest minds in creative, design and marketing will gather to analyze and inspire the very best in creative and effective communication.”The event was attended by some renowned personalities such as Lord Sebastian Coe, former double Olympics gold medallist; Simon Clift, Global Chief Marketing Officer of Unilever; Allen Olivo, VP, Global Brand Marketing of Yahoo; Larry Flanagan, Chief Marketing Officer of Mastercard, and Dr Vijay Mallya, Chairman and CEO of India’s United Breweries and Kingfisher Airlines.

Singapore’s Minister Mentor, Lee Kuan Yew grace the event where he gave a speech, titled “Branding of Singapore”. He shared his personal perspectives on the strategy for branding and marketing of Singapore.

In his early days as Prime Minister, he decided that branding Singapore and its people is critical to its success, since the tiny island has no natural resources. Singapore’s current image as an efficient, law-abiding, stable, quality-conscious nation with integrity, is an end result of this strategy. Also part of this image is one of being prudish and up-tight. It is this latter part of image, that the government is now trying to change with casinos, Formula 1 races, and The Singapore Flyer (a giant ferris wheel).

Singapore started out after its independence in 1965 with the intention to create a corruption-free and efficient government so that it can be a place to do business without worry of its integrity. and inefficiencies. This has attracted many multi-national companies (MNCs) like Hewlett-Packard and Texas Instruments to start manufacturing facilities in the island.Similarly, Internet marketers must have a strategy and treat their online ventures as a long-term business.

Just like Singapore branding itself as an efficient, trustworthy and with integrity, Internet marketers must brand themselves as trustworthy, dependable and efficient. These enable Internet marketers to build good, trustful relationships with their subscribers. And when subscribers trust their Internet marketers, they will buy more! One important thing to note is that Internet marketers must build trust right from the beginning of their journey in Internet marketing. It’s much easier to start from a blank piece of paper.

It’s certainly not overnight that Singapore managed to cultivate it’s successes. Internet marketers, too must abide their time and build up their reputation by providing good content and service to their subscribers.

Strategies, just like business plans must have some flexibility built-in and be tweaked when necessary due to changing circumstances. This is what Singapore is trying to do now, to banish its staid and boring image by bringing in casinos, F1 races and the world’s largest ferris wheel, to attract more businesses and tourists to bring in more revenue.