By the beginning of July, two true and original Singapore stories had a new place in the video universe.

The first – Lady Without Fingerprints – is about Madam Lee Hwee Chin, the last of Singapore’s blade sharpeners. The second – Grandpa’s Words – belongs to 76-year-old cobbler Lee Tai Chin. The stories highlight hard work, tenacity and honest-to-goodness values.

Both shorts, presented under the tagline “Visible Scars, Invisible Strength”, were commissioned from Singapore-based premium video platform Viddsee, which connects a community of local filmmakers across the region.

The two social documentaries grew out of Vaseline’s international Healing Project, a global initiative providing relief in poverty-struck and disaster-torn areas.

In the Philippines, for instance, the project supported families rebuilding their lives after Typhoon Haiyan. In India, the project provided clinics in 2016 for thousands of rural families with no other access to healthcare.

“Vaseline is about healing skin. We’ve been doing this since 1870,” says Unilever Singapore’s head of marketing, Gale Choong.

The Singapore challenge was finding real and relevant stories for the local community. The ojective was to bolster Vaseline’s brand “among those who have known us for decades, while appealing to a demographic that spends most of their time online – all achieved in videos less than two minutes long,” Choong says.

More than 450,000 views and with average completion rates of 70% across Viddsee.com, YouTube and Facebook, Choong has ticked the box on targets met and is planning the next foray into the world of content marketing.

“We are keen to continue this collaboration and want to do more short films,” Choong says, adding”there are a lot more stories we can tell”.

What needs to be in place for her to tell them? “Being able to do more on a consistent basis is about cost, about ensuring that we have more beautiful short films on a sustainable basis.”

Published on ContentAsia's eNewsletter, 9 July 2018