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The cross-media design was implemented from the start of the Beijing Olympics. The branding strategy was to provide coverage both via traditional and new media, synergising the two.
omy.sg is the driver for setting up the cross-media design. As omy.sg has been working closely with the various Chinese publications under SPH, even before the Beijing Olympics, this allows for consistency in messaging across all channels and cross-media integration.
For the month long coverage of the Beijing Olympics, the synergy between old and new media is evident, with omy.sg providing the other publications with vodcasts, podcasts and other new media capabilities, while the various publications provide omy.sg with robust Olympics-related content, drawing from the wide array of articles they collectively churn out daily.
In total, there are three online platforms users can turn to for Olympics content – 1) the main omy.sg site (www.omy.sg) where users can go in and read all the latest news updates; 2) the Olympics microsite (http://olympics.omy.sg) specially set up for aggregating and organising all related Olympics content across all SPH Chinese publications. The microsite even have a LIVE medal tally that is updated every hour for users who are keenly keeping scores; 3) the Olympics blog (http://blog.omy.sg/olympics2008) which allows for a casual read of the experiences of SPH Chinese news journalists who are reporting on the ground; including candid personal accounts as well as analytical and feature pieces. (eg. http://blog.omy.sg/olympics2008/2008/08/24/%E5%86%8D%E8%A7%81%E5%A5%A5%E8%BF%90/ - where a young journalist recounts her experience covering the iconic event)
In addition, omy.sg also deployed a camera crew to work hand-in-hand with the various SPH Chinese journalists who were deployed to Beijing. This allows omy.sg to provide exclusive video footages, especially those pertaining to Team Singapore of which the Singapore audience is particularly interested in. (eg. http://olympics.omy.sg/news/outside/20080824_544.html - in-depth video interview with Singapore’s women table tennis player, Feng Tianwei)
The various SPH Chinese publications also regularly trail readers to go online for additional Olympics videos, photos or other multimedia applications [(Appendix I (Lianhe Zaobao), J (my paper), K (Shin Min Daily) and L (Lianhe Wanbao)]. Likewise, on omy.sg’s homepage, the Olympics microsite and blog, there are visuals of the daily covers of the various newspaper and short snippets of their content to trail online users to grab them off the newsstand for the latest and most interesting Olympics updates (Appendix M). |
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As a result, Lianhe Zaobao was awarded with a Gold in Editorial Planning and a Silver in Design at the Newspaper Design Competition for the Beijing Olympics for their special Olympics supplement. Jointly organised by the Chinese Society of Newspaper Design and Fudan University, the competition attracted over 2,690 newspaper entries from 100 countries, including China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Australia (see Appendix N). The daily supplement was well received by readers and helped increase the circulation figures of Lianhe Zaobao during the period. For the online front, during the Olympics month, omy.sg was able to achieve close to 6.5 million page impressions – about 1 million page impressions higher than earlier months in 2008. Circulation for the other SPH Chinese publications also went up, demonstrating how extension cross-media collaborations for big news event like the Beijing Olympics can benefit all media involved by working closely as an integrated media platform. |