Shaping a nation with slogans

Historical public awareness campaigns shine a light on Singapore's path to independence

- Teo Kai Xiang

"Do you kill children? If you spit, you do." This was the stark slogan printed on 10,000 posters plastered across Singapore's buses, coffee shops, factories and offices in 1949, as part of a public awareness campaign by the Singapore Anti-Tuberculosis Association.

While this anti-spitting campaign might be brutally direct by today's standards, such language was typical of campaigns at the time.

Before "Keep Singapore Clean" became a national refrain, before anyone was urged to be like The Thoughtful Bunch's Hush-Hush Hannah or Bag-Down Benny on public transport, pre-independence Singapore was already experimenting with the campaigns that would become an essential part of the island's urban DNA.

A dive into The Straits Times' archives reveals dozens of these campaigns tackling everything from birth control to blood donation.

One 1947 campaign appealed to the colony's Chinese community for blood because the group was "on the debit side of the Blood Bank," stemming from cultural apprehension towards blood donation.

Campaigners used a variety of tactics to entice people to give blood during the post-war shortage.

The Happy World amusement park offered free three-month passes to donors, while production company Shaw Brothers produced an educational cinema slide screening titled A Matter Of Life And Death.

Campaigners rolled out philanthropist Lee Kong Chian, one of South-east Asia's richest men, as an example of a blood donor. This may be one of the earliest examples of influencer marketing on the island.

"Some of these ideas have just been honed and sharpened," says Dr Donna Brunero, a senior lecturer at the National University of Singapore's (NUS) department of history.