Project: Sheng Siong Dunk Viral Campaign
Role: Head of Creative Content,
Art+Copy, Sneaker Design
Company: Ox Street (Acquired by Carousell Group in 2021)
Special thanks: Sole.Machina (Final shoe production), Shooting Gallery Asia (sneaker photoshoot)
Being an avid sneakerhead has some advantages. Especially when working on a project for early stage VC funded peer to peer streetwear marketplace Ox Street, where I serve as their Head of Creative Content in residence, in addition to helping them in their fundraising activities within the start-up ecosystem. Online sentiment monitoring and sneaker community research showed us that there was a severe amount of hype for the 7-Eleven Nike Dunk collab sneakers, which were eventually canned. We decided to tie this ‘convenience store’ hype thread towards a localized context - using Singapore supermarket chain Sheng Siong as a satirical “what if?” sneaker collab substitute for 7-Eleven. This piece of content went viral and was covered by many local news sites in Singapore such as Mustsharenews, SGAG, Hype & Stuff and Reddit. This resulted in an unprecedented level of Earned Media for Ox Street.
”To recognise the beacon of essential retail and sustenance that the supermarket is for Singaporeans, and even more so during the Covid-19 pandemic…Ox Street has come out with the latest cool item — Sheng Siong sneakers.” - MustShareNews.com
”Sheng Siong Nike SB Dunk sneakers concept. Sweet af, would love to cop a pair.” - Reddit
“Last week, pictures surfaced of a potential 7-11 Nike SB Dunk which would be limited to only 711 pairs. The team at Ox Street—our own Singapore-based marketplace to buy and sell authenticated sneakers—has very quickly revved up their creative game too and churned out a concept for a Sheng Siong pair…an item I’d love to own.” - Hype & Stuff
As a side effect of this Viral Campaign, news outlets started to pick up on our earlier satirical sneaker concepts (pictured below). Truth be told, nobody can predict what goes viral, but if you create a consistent output of creative content aimed at a passionate audience within a niche vertical (such as sneakers in this case), sometimes magic happens, which leads them to discover all your earlier (and future) work:
“Ox Street’s head of content Jonathan Leong, also known as The Cyborg Samurai, also posted concept art for Corona x Air Jordan 1 sneakers (see below), in what it called “the most unfortunate collaboration ever?” It’s probably referring to the beer brand sharing the same name as the novel coronavirus, which causes Covid-19.” - MustShareNews
