With in-person events back on the agenda for the international shipping market, 2023 marked the return of a full-scale, in-person Singapore Maritime Week – one of Asia’s largest maritime events. A returning event cannot rely on habit. Attendance has to be rebuilt, against an audience that had spent three years learning to participate remotely.
SMW is an annual gathering of the international maritime community, driven by the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA), bringing together key opinion leaders through conferences, dialogues and forums, covering a wide range of topics appealing to different segments of the market. Together with the MPA, Informa Markets appointed BLUE to plan and execute a campaign that would inform and engage global maritime decision makers about the week’s agenda and encourage their participation.
BLUE built the campaign around the structure of the event itself. With four key agenda tracks – Innovation, Sustainability, Services and Talent – we developed tailored ad content for each conference and amplified it segmented audiences – most likely to be interested in the topic – rather than promoting the week as a single proposition.
Weekly LinkedIn content informed and inspired SMW page followers about the 2023 edition, highlighting key speakers and discussion topics, supported by LinkedIn advertising built around the conference themes, and Google Ads search and display campaigns optimised for return per click.
BLUE also supported MPA live from the event with daily social media content summarising the important conversations that were happening in real-time – keeping followers engaged and up to date with what was happening throughout the week.
The campaign delivered over 67,000 visitors to the event website, grew the SMW LinkedIn following by more than 1,000 members and generated 61,000 video views. It reached target audiences across the full breadth of the agenda – from shipowners and decarbonisation thought leaders to professional services decision makers – and contributed significantly to registrations for the various SMW conferences throughout the week.
