It is really interesting everytime you have a very traditional, old school organization filled with middle-aged executives trying to be “hip” and cool to show they have caught up with the times. The equation somehow never fails to go wrong.
One such organization which attempted this recently is the Media Development Authority (MDA) of Singapore. To those of you who are unfamiliar with the Singapore governmental structure, MDA is the arm/division of the government in charge of driving and pushing the Digital Media industry of Singapore. They created a video recently of their senior executives (CEO, CTO, Communications Director, Marketing Director, etc) “rapping” along with some attempts to pull off typical ghetto rapper moves.
The title of the video is “Sing along to the MDA Senior Management Rap” o_O… (what a title. Somehow they made a special note to include the word SENIOR)
Here’s the video for your viewing pleasure:
I had this “o_O??” expression on my face while watching the entire video. Yes, I watched the whole video through because I wanted to see what other shocking tricks they had up their sleeves. This has got to be the most “Singlish”-accented rap video in existence and of all people it had to come from the Singapore government.
Anyway, back to the essence of the video. I believe from the lyrics they were trying to bring more youth awareness on the existence of MDA and some of the stuff they do. I actually showed the video to a few of my hall mates (both locals and foreigners) and surprise surprise! Most of them did not know about the existence of MDA before this. After watching the video however, they still don’t know what MDA stands for, what exactly it does or that its a division of the government. What do they remember? There’s this organization called MDA that created this really bad (or hillarious?) video of middle-aged executives trying to be cool.
My thoughts? I think some of the senior management were forced into doing this as you can see how restrained some of them were. However, I have to give it to them for attempting to change the stereotype of government organizations being old school and traditional. As for the organization as a whole, a big “boo boo” for creating a badly done video which left majority of viewers with an awkward expression. Some of us youths didn’t even know how to react. With the resources and multitude of talents MDA has access to, a better job could have been done. If you want to push and drive the digital media industry to world standards, you have to set a better example.
Thoughts on this from others:
Battle of the Snarks: On MDA’s mindnumbing rap music video
Singapore MDA Rap Video
Who will rap MDA for their (c)rap?
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