Be a Manager

Event: "The Little Nonya" Road Show and Meet-the-Fans Session
Date: 27th December 2008
Venue: Compass Point Mall

a)"The Little Nonya" is a Chinese drama serial that debuted on the 25th of November 2008. It had gained an enormous fan base since then. The primary goal of this roadshow was, as is the goal of most roadshows, to gain publicity. Publicity for the television series would mean more viewers, and more viewers mean higher ratings. Also, another goal was probably to maintain popularity with the viewers. A meet the fans session is something of a goodwill act to the people who watch the show, and when the viewers feel that they are cared for by the people who make the shows, they would continue watching it and supporting it. Also, since the event was held in Sengkang, the targeted audience were pretty obviously people from the heartlands.

b) The target audience were the people who watch "The Little Nonya" television series on Channel 8. The majority of them would probably be housewives, as well as teenagers who are into television drama series. However, it is obvious from the thousands of people from all ages and demographic groups that gathered in the mall that the target audience was not restricted to merely housewives and teenage girls. Anyone who watched the show was included in the target audience.

c) The event was heavily promoted on channel 8, and since the show already had such a large fan base, word of the event passed around fairly quickly. How successful the event was publicized was directly related to how heavily promoted the show was, and The Little Nonya was promoted extensively, to the point where it was criticised for overpromotion.

d) The publicity generated from this event was immense, owing to the fact that over five thousand people turned up for an event in a relatively small building. While this in itself was reason enough for a fair amount of news coverage, it was what happened because there were so many people that generated the most publicity. Tiles in the shopping mall cracked under the pressure of s many people. The article can be found here: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/398796/1/.html

This was also covered on televised news broadcasts on Channels 5 and 8. What this meant was that further publicity was generated for free, albeit in a negative light.

e) Calling the event a "success" would be a slight understatement. Just look at these photos that were taken off the stomp website.

Yes, they are very blur and grainy, but they show just how staggeringly large the crowd that day was. The entire ground level was a sea of human heads, people lined up several ranks deep on every level, from the ground floor to the fifth floor, just so they could see the cast members and the performance by Olivia Ong (who sang the theme song for The Little Nonya). Shop keepers had to close their shutters to prevent people from going in.

Now, there is a problem that should have been addressed. The manager had obviously grossly underestimated the number of people that would arrive, which meant that the venue was insufficiently large to house the fans. This caused major problems like structural damage to the mall. Also, safety was a big issue. There was no effective emergency plan put in place in case a fire or any accident happened.