SINGAPORE - Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) and StarHub have deepened their content and marketing partnership in the media space, and are now expanding the tie-up to include new sectors such as healthcare and education.
The partnership - which initially spanned areas such as advertising sales, cross-media content creation and publishing, data analytics and marketing - will now include joint creations in connected buildings, the Internet of Things (IoT) and smart retail.
For instance, SPH and its affiliates such as Orange Valley Healthcare and Han Language Centre can expect to benefit from IoT devices that monitor the well-being of the elderly, or manage the use of air-conditioners to reduce energy wastage.
Renewing their memorandum of understanding (MOU) for another two years, SPH chief executive officer Ng Yat Chung said: "It has been a fruitful partnership with StarHub for the past two years as we capitalised on our synergies as media owners to improve our product offerings and grow our customer base."
Speaking at StarHub Green in Ubi where the MOU was signed, Mr Ng said he expects the partnership renewal to create more business opportunities for both companies.
"Our businesses are facing different degrees of disruption. We need to find creative ways to distribute content and recreate the business model moving forward," he added.
SPH publishes the flagship English-language broadsheet The Straits Times, financial daily The Business Times and Chinese-language broadsheet Lianhe Zaobao, among others.
It acquired nursing home provider Orange Valley Healthcare for $164 million in April 2017, and a 75 per cent stake in Chinese tuition group Han Language Centre in August the same year.
Said StarHub chief executive officer Tan Tong Hai: "This renewal not only underlines our shared commitment to delivering richer content and experiences to our customers, it also takes our partnership to the next level by breaking new ground in non-media collaboration."
Over the past two years, StarHub has carried SPH's current affairs, entertainment and lifestyle content across its pay-TV service. These programmes include Ministerial Coffee Talk, Zaobao Keywords, Zaobao-produced microfilm Pa's Expressions, and It Matters - The Future of Us.
Subscription drives which bundled SPH newspapers such as The Business Times and Lianhe Zaobao with StarHub's online streaming service, dubbed StarHub Go, were also well received by readers, both companies said. They will co-create incentives to reward loyal subscribers.
Moving forward, SPH content will be shown on StarHub Go. StarHub's content will also be featured on SPH's radio stations Kiss92, UFM100.3, OneFM 91.3, Money FM 89.3 and 96.3 Hao FM.
Both organisations plan to apply data analytics technologies to mobile users' locations and time spent at certain malls, for instance, for deeper customer insight. Footfall at SPH's retail assets - The Seletar Mall , Paragon and The Clementi Mall - will be studied for retail intelligence.
Collaboration between SPH and StarHub goes back more than a decade. In May 2003, they launched the free info-educational channel, Sars Channel, with broadcaster Mediacorp. It aired programmes about the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) in the four major languages and selected Chinese dialects.
In 2005, SPH provided mobile breaking news for StarHub's i-mode mobile Internet subscribers.
