UrbanWire

By Saw Lidong • UrbanWire
Additional reporting and photos by Chen Weli
• email reporter • email story • printer friendly

Sifting through Monday's papers to find out the results of the Monaco Grand Prix, I came across this Creative Technology advertisement spread for their 5th warehouse sale. Before I knew it, I was scanning the spread to check out the promotional items, only to find out that I still couldn't afford them. Oh well, the spread would make a nice poster for my room, I thought. Then I spotted this little section at the bottom of the spread.

"Jointly organised by Catholic High School & Creative Technology Ltd. Family Fun Fest. The Fun Fair For Everyone" it read.

Creative with a clever marketing strategy or just using child labour? Anyway, I made my mind to go check out the event and investigate.

The scene was pretty chaotic at the Creative Headquarters. Students carting boxes of food and merchandise were running riot all over the fun fest, trying to hawk their ware to 'innocent' passers-by. I had to turn down like 10 students after just 1 round at the carnival. But in spite of the chaos, the carnival was pretty interesting. There

were over 50 stalls at the fest, ranging from a satay stall to dunking pool to LAN gaming.

According to principal, Mr Lee Hak Boon (whom I stumbled upon at 1 stall), the stalls were set up by the students themselves, and whatever profits they made would go into their respective Co-curricular Acivities (CCA) fund. That explained the enthusiastic salesmanship of the students. But how did they get this opportunity to collaborate with an enterprise as vast as Creative? "It was like a boyfriend-girlfriend relation, when Creative was outreaching for a possible organisation to launch such an event, we answered," replied Mr Lee. And you thought boy-girl relationships (BGRs) was discouraged in secondary schools...

Well, the students did seem to be having a lot of fun, with even Mr Lee sportingly joining in by offering to be dunked into the pool. Mr Sim Wong Hoo, chairman and CEO of Creative Technology, had a hand in Mr Lee's wet outcome, but at a heavy price of $50 charity to Catholic High for each failed attempt. The result was Mr Sim $1000 poorer, and Mr Lee significantly drenched.

At the end of the day, some Catholic High students literally got Creative. Mr Sim

had spent the day trying out all the stalls and promised to award Creative products (worth up to $1,000) to the most creative, most entertaining and best managed stores. Needless to say, the dunking pool won the most entertaining award hands down, for attracting the attention of the whole carnival by having their principal in a "compromising" position. The marble picking stall, where you had to pick up the most marbles with chopsticks within a certain time limit, was deemed the most creative, while the pizza stall was the best managed.
Overall, the general consensus from the students was that this event was a very successful one.

It's All Good

Creative Technology's move in collaborating with an educational institute was pure genius. By co-organising the Family Fun Fest with Catholic High, Creative indirectly marketed itself to the public as a good corporate organisation thatgoes all out to support student activities. Ultimately, both parties benefited from this experience. I guess I'll have better luck looking for controversy elsewhere, or maybe I just need, like the students of Catholic High, to get creative.