What AshleyMadison.com can teach you about marketing in Singapore

It’s pretty easy to get massive viral PR in Singapore. Create a website that specialises in adultery. Bring it to Singapore. Let the politicians, facebook and public do the rest. Bang you have the No.1 “dating” site in Singapore.

Some people never learn do they? Oldest trick in the book is to get something called to be banned for being outrageous/sexy/too much fun/leading people astray/morally suspect. These kind of tricks have been created by brands in the UK/US for decades! People are generally more cynical now but it still works here.

The greatest example is still Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax”. Banned infamously by Mike Read in 1984 it went on to not only top the charts for weeks on end but stay in the charts for a record breaking number of weeks and led directly to Frankie Goes To Hollywood becoming the biggest group of the 80’s. Thanks Mike Read! It ensured that Relax was played everywhere else apart from Radio One.

No sooner had AshleyMadison.com, (the site you go to for an affair), say that they were coming to Singapore when various people and media companies said it should be banned. Next a pretty ridiculous “Block AshleyMadison.com” Facebook site (apparently it is nearing the 30,000 mark, big deal considering there are 3 million people on facebook in Singapore--that’s 0.01%), letters to the press and a great debate about nothing. All the while feeding the amount of times someone has heard of the brand AshleyMadison.com.

In case the various people, media companies, self-righteous letter writers and misguided, hypocritical facebook users haven’t noticed there are plenty of other opportunities for people to have affairs in Singapore if that is their choice, none of which are banned.

Shall we start with the existing dating sites, many of which ask whether are you in a relationship…some people are honest and say yes hoping to find the same (which is what AshleyMadison.com specialises in) and some don’t say but are and find a new partner on the side anyway.

Then there are the multitude of KTV bars where everyone knows what happens behind the scenes. Then there are the massage/spa/beauty parlours offering all kinds of services. The ultimate being Orchard Towers which is a top attraction in Singapore for expats and married Singaporeans too. Then there are just normal people finding another person in a bar, café, at work, in a club, when one/both are in a relationship.

It’s not exactly hard to have an affair in Singapore should you wish to do so. AshleyMadison.com is merely providing a business service that connects these dots up even easier. Let the people and the market decide whether it is successful or not. But it’s hardly either revolutionary or going to increase the amount of people having an affair. If you want to have one, you have already decided to do so by the time you have found the how.

I was in a taxi one day and heard a “joke” on Singapore’s No.1 radio station Gold FM. It ran “what’s the definition of someone who wants to have an affair…the answer a Singaporean man”. Should that radio show be banned for stating what is presumably a well known in-joke amongst Singaporeans? You can have all the marriages you want but if they’re all based on buying HDB’s and not something based on love then you’re going to be fuelling the fire of affairs.

Since we have had all the shouting and screaming about banning AshleyMadison.com from Singapore do you know what has happened to the amount of people who have visited the site AshleyMadsion.com in Singapore? Guess! According to my sources it’s now the No.1 “dating” website in Singapore! Wahaay. Without spending a cent on marketing they are already No.1.

AshleyMaddison.com have just posted a PR agency brief to keep them in the news. That must be the easiest PR brief in the world. They haven’t even appointed them and people have already been talking about them non-stop since the announcement that they were coming.

On LinkedIn it was even suggested to me that the winning agency wouldn’t want to list them as a client. Why? Since when did marketing/pr agencies start taking moral judgements about who to have as a client or not?

What about the obesity driving fast food brands or sugary diabetes giving fmcg brands, the global emission busting petrol brands, the brands that use sweat labour and don’t pay the minimum wage and make kids work in terrible conditions without a break, estate agents, banks. The list is endless if you’re going to start judging clients on some moral high ground that you yourself probably do not keep yourself then you probably shouldn’t be running a marketing agency.

Ultimately what the people trying to ban AshleyMadison.com will find out is that there is no such thing as bad PR, especially not in the case of an affairs website! AshleyMadison.com says thank you Singapore for all the free marketing.