Singapore Navy Open House 2013: Pre-publicity

The Republic of Singapore Navy (RSN) is due to hold its Navy Open House (NOH) from 18 to 19 May 2013 at Changi Naval Base (CNB).

This year's NOH will be a treat for naval enthusiasts as the line up of warships, submarines and naval technology they can see is expected to be boosted by foreign warships who will join the International Maritime Defence Exhibition (IMDEX) naval show (14 to 16 May'13).

Previous NOH editions have been crowd magnets.

Indeed, pre-event publicity for past NOHs have proven to be victims of their own success as RSN duty personnel struggled to deal with long queue lines and visitors short on patience.

With proper planning, expectations of visitors can be properly managed. This is why the NOH pre-publicity is so important.

First touchpoint
As the first touchpoint to potential visitors, pre-publicity sets the stage by calibrating what visitors can expect to see and experience at the show. Many would be veterans to assorted Singapore Armed Forces open house events and would, naturally, expect to see, learn and do more.

With the bar set high, the NOH 2013 organising committee would be well aware they cannot disappoint.

With some months yet to the open house, we are intrigued by the idea that the open press conference may be held at VivoCity, just opposite Sentosa island. Previous press conferences were held in a briefing room at the Fleet Headquarters at CNB: Powerpoint presentation followed by some kind of demo or ship tour for the photographers.

Staging the pre-event publicity at VivoCity would give NOH publicists ample room to generate excitement and anticipation for this event, which takes place every two years or so.

If they manage to berth a warship alongside VivoCity, the hull is likely to be one of the RSN's larger warships as Victory-class Missile Corvettes and Fearless-class Patrol Vessels are too small to accommodate media personnel.

So this logically points to the Endurance-class tank landing ships or the Formidable-class stealth frigates.

We would choose one of the FDs, purely from the standpoint of creating a buzz among visitors in the area as the stealth frigate design is sexier than the largely functional design of the LSTs.

An LST would look very sexy indeed and might even knock off some socks if the RSN displayed the man-of-war with max load FCUs/FCEPs and pontoons - which is unlikely as it has never done so.

And if one chooses a stealth frigate, the warship that clocked operational experience in the Gulf of Aden chasing pirates would probably be a good candidate. The GOA operation codenamed Operation Blue Sapphire (Maritime) involved RSS Intrepid.

Next comes the possible date: The prelude to the March school holidays would be ideal. It is early enough to give visitors a heads-up and can catch the weekend holiday crowd in the area

So the guesstimate is as follows: 15/16 March 2013 (TBC), RSN stealth frigate Intrepid (TBC) alongside VivoCity. That should make a nice photo op.

Milnuts, you know what to do. :-)


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