BrandRepublic Asia, 6 Nov 2008, Robin Hicks
Karuppiah Vijayalakshmi is an odd sort of doctor. Not for her the travails of individual patients. She treats an entire population, or at least large bits of it, all at once.
The general practitioner turned social marketer now heads the marketing and communications arm of Singapore’s Health Promotion Board, a Government department founded in 2001 with a mission ‘to build a nation of healthy and happy people’. And in that role she is fast developing a reputation as one of the Lion City’s most creative marketers.
Her job involves persuading more than four million Singaporeans in four different languages that smoking isn’t cool or that chicken rice isn’t the cornerstone of a healthy diet. No easy task in a country that takes health less seriously than one might think.
“The biggest problem we face is that most Singaporeans do not see health as a desirable lifestyle choice,” she says. “Our job is made harder by advertising messages that are contrary to ours.”
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