Singapore media platform Mediacorp ticks off a fourth element of its social content creation acceleration strategy on Friday (11 Feb), when the winners of the first Pinwheels Awards are announced.

The awards follow a three-stage journey that started with identifying digital content creators, nurturing a creative ecosystem, and putting in place a monetisation structure and relationships. Now, organisers say, it’s time to recognise broader creator achievements in the space. 

355 entries from more than 130 content creators were received for the inaugural Awards, which opened in November last year for content made between November 2020 and end October 2021. 

The four finalists for the S$10,000/US$7,433 grand prize and Content Creator of the Year Award are mqfish, UNfiltered, Mark Yeow and 360 Entertainment Production. 
In all, 30 content creators made it to the finals across 14 categories, including Best Micro Documentary/Non-Fiction Video, Best Podcast/Commentary Video, Best Newcomer Video, Most Social Good Video and Most Innovative Video.  

Held in partnership with YouTube, the Pinwheels are the next step in a creator strategy Mediacorp kicked off with the Bloomr.sg initiative in 2017, followed with the Bloomr.SG MCN Accelerator in April 2021. Bloomr.SG today supports about 130 creators responsible for about a billion impressions and about 45 YouTube channels. As part of the push into social content, Mediacorp was appointed as Singapore’s first official YouTube Multi-Channel Network. 

Pinwheel, open to Singaporeans and permanent residents anywhere in the world, are a leap forward in the space in Southeast Asia. “Singapore is in many ways a thought leader for our ASEAN neighbourhood,” says Ajay Vidyasagar, Asia Pacific regional director, You Tube & Google Video. 

In April last year, YouTube reached more than four million people in Singapore. The country has 450 YouTube channels that have 100,000 subs or more, about a third more than this time last year. 35 channels have a million subs or more – 75% year-on-year growth – which means 35 content companies in the country have interest from one in five people in Singapore.  

Vidyasagar describes this momentum as “extraordinary”. He adds that the rare phenomenon of almost 80% of a country’s population tuning into a platform is happening largely because of “strong thought leaders who are content experts in these geographies”. 

Singapore is also one of YouTube’s fastest-growing revenue markets in the region, he says, adding that the pure ad model is evolving into an environment with multiple services that allow creators monetise in different ways. 

Vidyasagar talks about a monetisation journey that has already seen meaningful bump-ups on top of ad-driven revenues. For instance, subscription revenue, including a stake for creators, is up by multiple digits. 

Parminder Singh, Mediacorp’s chief commercial and digital officer, says the Pinwheels are the next step in the journey towards gathering 1,000+ creators from Singapore into the Mediacorp fold in the next few years and driving up view time. Right now, Singh says view time is growing by between 3% and 5% monthly for Mediacorp-affiliated creators.  

Mediacorp and YouTube stress that the Pinwheels are not restricted to Bloomr.SG creators. And in broadening Pinwheels’ base, they’re getting no argument, least of all from Bloomr.sg. “A lot of people have great content,” says Bloomr.sg lead, Diogo Martins, adding that global content trends have taken firm root among Singapore creators – including social commentary and broad-ranging current affairs discussions.  

“We are on a journey to help every person in this country to potentially become a story teller,” YouTube’s Vidyasagar says.

“We want to inspire and educate and build value,” he adds. “We believe we should get to a point where every user is at some point of time on a weekly or monthly basis a creator”. 

The stumbling blocks are by now familiar, and the key to a viable ecosystem is making sure creators are “enabled and empowered”. 
Singh says huge effort is going into the bid to prevent the life of a creator from “ending up being a few videos and then reality hits them and they return to regular professions”. 

“Story telling and money making are two different powers,” he says.

Published in ContentAsia's 7-20 February 2022 eNewsletter