ISB Advertising: #NUSBeyond (2020/NUS115)

Five of our ISBs – PA33K, PC3769R, PC3906L, PC3983M and PC3989Y – are earmarked to carry advertisements for the NUS Admissions Campaign.

Featuring illustrious students and alumni against a white background, these distinctive buses are easy to spot on the streets of NUS. The advert wraps are refreshed each year, typically before Open Day, to feature a new set of NUS students.

Although NUS Open Day 2020 has been moved online, the arrival of March once again brings a new set of advert wraps, as documented by yours truly. This time round, the orange area on the bus (previously a large patch from floor to ceiling) has been shrunk to a smaller rectangle.

Each slogan contains the name of the featured person’s faculty woven in. The main idea of the advertisement – a white base with a central section being a photograph of the person featured – remains.

In addition, the white section at the rear contains the small text “NUS115/Shaping the Future”. NUS was founded in 1905; this year 2020 is indeed our 115th anniversary. It is a shame that due to the COVID-19 situation, we are unlikely to see large-scale celebrations.

In this year’s round of advertisements, because a lot of the advertisement straddles the border from side body panel to window, we can have a look at how the ad transitions from opaque wrap to perforated vinyl.

Perforated vinyl, known sometimes by the brand name ContraVision, is the material used on bus windows for advertisements. It has many holes inside it, which allows the advertisement to be seen outside from far without entirely blocking the window on the inside.

The advertisements featured on each bus are now shown below.

PA33K

2019 advertisement: Decoding Genes to Fight Cancer, featuring Dr Li Jingmei, an A*STAR Scientist from Science and USP.

2020 advertisement 1*: Design for an Inclusive Environment, featuring Mizah Rahman, co-founder of Participate in Design from SDE.

*Mizah Rahman passed away from Stage IV Colon Cancer in May 2020 at the age of 33. Her husband, Adib Jalal, keeps her light shining through his writing. The bus advertisement featuring her has since been replaced, but her memory will live on.

2020 advertisement 2*: The Art & Science of Entrepreneurship, featuring Lim Qing Ru, co-founder of Zopim (now Zendesk Chat) from FASS.

PC3769R

2019 advertisement: Reaching New Heights, featuring Ooi Yong Ann, a network planning analyst at SIA from FASS.

2020 advertisement: Passion in the Science of Conservation, featuring Dr Andie Ang, a primatologist from FoS.

PC3906L

2019 advertisement: Connecting People, Creating Communities, featuring Poornima Venkataraman, a Facebook data specialist from SoC.

2020 advertisement: Tomorrow’s Business Today, featuring Ritchie Ng, Chief AI Officer at Ensemble Capital, from Business.

PC3983M

2019 advertisement: Forging A Better Society, featuring Danial Hakim, an Assistant Manager at Ministry of Manpower, from Law.

2020 advertisement: Defending the Principles of Law, featuring Adam Maniam, a litigator at Drew & Napier from Law.

PC3989Y

2019 advertisement: Engineering a Smart Nation, featuring Lau Lee Hong, an Embedded Software Engineer at GovTech from Engineering.

2020 advertisement: Engineering Our Future Landscape, featuring Kwa Chin Soon, seconded from BCA as a Senior Assistant Director to the Ministry of National Development, from Engineering and USP.

Find out more

These five buses merely highlight a few of our illustrious students. To find out more about other graduates and undergraduates, you may check out the #NUSBeyond hashtag or this website.