SGSecure’s Viral Campaign Exposed a 93% Crisis Readiness Failure
SGSecure just proved Singapore's public crisis comms playbook needs fewer dashboards and more drills.
Singapore’s new SGSecure web series racked up 1.1 million views, but the street-level test told a harsher story: a 93% vigilance failure among passersby who faced staged threats. That gap, between watching and acting, is now the region’s crisis readiness red flag.
SGSecure is a national movement in Singapore. It was launched by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in 2016 to prepare the public and to better respond in the event of a terrorist attack. But the case also has lessons for the private sector.
Why it matters
Asia’s business leaders are spending more on crisis tools and cyber defenses, but the SGSecure results show engagement is not necessarily preparedness. In real tests, only 17.3% noticed suspicious items. Only 5.9% of those who noticed took action, roughly 1% of all passersby. In a developed market like Singapore, high trust can create complacency that kills.
State of play
Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs launched its first SGSecure social experiment web series in July. “What would you do when terror strikes?” featured three simulations: an armed intruder, a suspicious suitcase, and a car bomb setup. The campaign drove strong awareness by conventional metrics, 1.1 million views and a 46% view-through rate. Episode prompts focused on simple actions like “Run, hide, tell” and “Press, tie, tell.”
But the social experiments revealed the real problem. Only 17.3% of 2,530 people noticed a suspicious object. Only 5.9% of those who noticed intended or tried to inform authorities. That is a 93% vigilance failure that MHA surfaced in its SGSecure experiments. That clashes with self-reported confidence. An SGSecure survey found 88% of respondents said they would report suspicious items. That claim is at odds with observed behavior in the field, as officials have publicly assessed SGSecure’s effectiveness.
VML calls this an “un-government campaign,” using influencers and social experiments to push vigilance. “We put influencers in real-life simulated crises on camera, capturing how chaos impacts memory and judgment,” said Nimesh Desai, CEO of VML Singapore, in coverage of the effort. The format is fresh, but the behavior gap remains.
Leighton Cosseboom
The big picture
This is not a Singapore-only issue. Globally, three out of four organizations say they are ready for major risks. Yet 76% lack adequate insurance to stay profitable in a crisis, and only 12% have comprehensive business continuity plans, a gap documented in risk preparedness research. In the US, more than one in five employees receive no emergency preparedness training. Only 59% have done drills, patterns mirrored internationally, as tracked in emergency preparedness training.
Meanwhile, budgets are flowing. The global crisis management services market is forecast to reach US$122 billion by 2029 at 5.8% CAGR, as shown in market projections. Asia is also scaling communications spend. The region holds a 36.8% share of the public relations tools market, and digital media already accounts for 76% of Asia Pacific ad spend.
Yet channel breadth does not equal behavior change. Singapore’s pandemic response used a multi-platform, multi-language approach. It built exceptional trust, with 85.5% reporting high trust in government COVID-19 information and 85.4% trusting the government’s handling ability. Even so, the SGSecure experiments show that trust and reach do not necessarily trigger action when seconds matter.
Interactive content alone is not a fix. MHA and VML have tried interactive films on TikTok and influencer-led un-government campaigns. The street tests suggest engagement creates attention, not competence.
What to watch
Measurement and accountability. In Asia, 42% of effectiveness studies measured only the campaign period, a blind spot that skews results. As Benoit Wiesser of Ogilvy notes, effects from campaigns that run one to four weeks appear four times stronger when measurement continues more than a month later.
The next test for SGSecure is not views. It is whether notice-and-report rates improve in future field trials.
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