A group of content marketing course participants in Singapore has been stripped of their prize title and money and disqualified from a competition they entered after they were called out for intellectual property (IP) theft and blatant impersonation.

Yup, sit tight — this is one pretty crazy story.

And it starts with Singapore's first mermaid, Syrena:

On April 30, Syrena, whose real name is Cara Neo, took to her Facebook page with a pretty damning accusation: a student group calling themselves "Magnificent 7" had:

- taken videos she had not authorised them to use to cut together into a video,

- filmed an interview with someone pretending to be her,

- and put all this together with other stolen footage from other sources for a video they won S$7,000 in prize money in a competition pitch to the Singapore Tourism Board.

But wait, who are these people?

Magnificent 7 is a group of participants in Creator Collective (CC), which is a 10-week free content marketing course organised by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), in partnership with local content marketing agency Brand New Media (BNM). 

The course culminated in a creative pitch the group was to do for the Singapore Tourism Board, with the winning team handpicked by a panel of judges for S$7,000 in prize money awarded by Singapore Press Holdings. The money should then be used to create a pilot episode for a content series.

So as you can see, there are a good number of people involved in this entire thing. And we haven't even started telling you what happened.

We reached out to Neo, who gave us the timeline of events, starting from when Magnificent 7 first reached out to her.

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March 13, 2018: Magnificent 7 "pitches" to Neo

On March 13, a member of Magnificent 7 introduced herself as a group from CC and told Neo that the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) was their client.

According to Neo, this was what they said:

"This is a pitch video to STB, it will be very short and it won't be broadcast or made public... We get real clients like Lazada, Chan Brothers etc, and my group has Singapore Tourism Board as a client."

However, Neo argues, it was not clearly presented to her that this was actually a course they were doing, and the video they were working on was to be a mock brief and not a real pitch — in other words, in reality, there would be no monetary, exposure or significant publicity opportunities (since it's not going to be a real campaign).

When she asked where the campaign would appear, the group apparently told her the following:

"It will reside on the media assets of STB like STB's YouTube channel first, as far as we know."

The initial week of their correspondence, explains Neo, was a back-and-forth of her finding out more about their project.

“Having being giving the impression that it was an official pitch and potential job, I naturally politely expressed my interest and then asked clarification questions.”

March 20 - April 7: No, then yes, then let's meet up to discuss

After a week of correspondence, the team emailed her on March 20 and told her that they were unable to proceed with the shoot because of their client's "alternate plans". Neo left it at that.

However, two and a half weeks later, Neo received another email, dated April 7, from the team telling her that their plan was going ahead after all, and that they would still like her help to front their campaign.

Magnificent 7's plan, she says, was to feature Neo's story of pursuing her passion for being a mermaid to bring out STB's "Passion Made Possible" tagline.

The team then consulted her on filming her in water, stressing again that the short video they eventually produce won't be made public, unless STB accepts their pitch. They had written:

"If STB accepts our pitch, then we can proceed with your [Neo's] story as part of an STB campaign to raise awareness of the "Passion Made Possible" theme."

As Neo was convinced that what they were pitching to her was an official campaign, she then sent them videos of herself "mermaiding" in the ocean in response to their earlier query, with the intention of giving them an idea of what it would look like.

She stresses that at no point did she consent to the use of the footage she had sent as part of Magnificent 7's video pitch, or anywhere else for that matter, really.

By this point, Neo agreed to meet with them to learn more about what they had in mind before committing her involvement with their project.

Working on a tight deadline

At the same time, one of the members of the group took the opportunity to share their timeline with Neo — the video has to be finished by April 23, for presentation and pitching on April 28.

This means that they had about two weeks (from April 7) to film and edit their video. Here's a screenshot of the excerpt of the email Neo received, that she shared with us:

April 12: Not actually a commercial campaign

The meeting, which Neo said was entirely for planning and discussion purposes, took place on April 12. She says she met two of the group members, whom Neo described to be "middle-aged, grown adults". They had also introduced themselves as "industry-level professionals", she added.

Neo says it was only now that it came to light that the campaign was actually a "student final project presentation" as part of the CC programme, and not an official business pitch.

She also adds that she did not commit to helping them at any point during the meeting and just told them that she would check her schedule.

After the discussion, a member of Magnificent 7 emailed Neo with the group's plans to shoot the video with her anytime between April 19 and 22, depending on her availability.

Two days later, however, Neo informed a representative of Magnificent 7 via WhatsApp that in view of the fact that, well, there really wasn't much in it for her, and she was already busy with other commercial projects, she had decided not to commit to appearing in their project:

April 30: Video featuring stolen footage, "Syrena" impersonator on Facebook, YouTube

It was about two weeks later, on Monday, April 30, that Neo says she realised the group had gone ahead with her story, despite her decision not to be part of it, and used the videos she sent to them earlier as part of their final project.

And of course, she maintains, no permission was sought from her to do this at all. For any part of what they did.

But yet, despite all this, the group had somehow won the course's top prize — and that's why their video was uploaded to YouTube and CC's Facebook page.

Both copies have since been removed, but you can watch a minute-long excerpt of it that Neo posted to her Facebook page here:

[video width="400" height="220" mp4="https://static.mothership.sg/1/2018/05/31691768_117748312423030_3663422273865383936_n.mp4"][/video]

Neo said she also noticed from watching the video that the team had additionally taken footage from YouTube clips owned by the Singapore Mermaid School, which Neo founded, as well as snippets from a feature of her on Channel NewsAsia.

The actress who impersonated Neo in the video was credited as "Cara/Syrena: Founder of Singapore Mermaid School" and is heard, and partly seen, narrating what is according to Neo a completely fictitious version of Neo's life story.

Some of the untruthful things mentioned in the video, said Neo, included claims such as:

• "When I was young, I actually lived by the sea..." - Neo told Mothership that she has never in her entire life lived by the sea, or ocean.
• "... I'm actually training them to be a mermaid and be the advocate as well..." - Neo shared that her job goes "far beyond that" and that she "would never say what she (the actress) said."

Media publicity & social media posts for winning group

Meanwhile, news of Magnificent 7's win was published in The Straits Times (ST) and The Business Times (BT).

To add insult to injury for Neo, she noticed that her mermaid name, Syrena, was misspelt as "Syrene" on both the print and online versions of the BT article:

Neo also found the behind-the-scenes images and video from the shoot the group did with Neo's impersonator, which are still up on CC's Instagram page as we write this:

In response to Mothership's queries on Wednesday, BNM managing director Joanne de Rozario said initially that the group explained verbally during its presentation that the girl appearing in the video was not actually Neo, adding also that it was done to a "closed audience".

Things got more complicated after this, though.

May 1: BNM asks Neo to remove her Facebook post

On May 1, Neo uploaded a video of herself explaining a latest development: de Rozario had allegedly asked her to take down her post, acting on a request allegedly from STB:

In summary, she said her business partner was also a witness to de Rozario allegedly making the following points over a phone call with Neo:

• STB complained to CC about Neo's Facebook post, saying that it presented STB in a bad light
• STB told CC to get Neo to take down the post
• Neo said she would not do so, to which de Rozario allegedly asked, "why not?" and later said, "Oh well. I'll just have to tell STB that you refused to take the post down."

However, when we reached out to de Rozario, she refuted these claims with the following:

"STB had contacted me to inform me about the post and that was it. It was my decision to call Syrena and ask if she would remove it. I did this because we had already corresponded over e-mail where both the Creator Collective and the team had apologised and explained:

1) we had removed the video

2) requested two publishers make corrections to the articles that were published

3) would call her the following day.

In no form or manner did I act on behalf of STB." 

And that's how STB got entangled in this — in response to queries from Mothership, a spokesperson said:

“STB was not a judge at the event and thus unable to comment. Nonetheless, we think it’s important to respect intellectual property rights and look forward to an amicable resolution to this matter.”

Neo and de Rozario ended up in a lengthy email correspondence that involved Neo making clear to the STB folks that at no point did she intend to implicate them in this negatively — the blame, she emphasised, was squarely on Magnificent 7, and CC/BNM.

May 2: BNM finally apologises, Magnificent 7's title & prize revoked

Finally, the evening of Wednesday, May 2 saw BNM releasing a statement for Creator Collective that announced their decision to revoke Magnificent 7's title and prize money.

In the statement, shared with Mothership, CC said their decision was reached because of the group's "failure to obtain official permission to tell the story of Syrena or 'Singapore’s first mermaid' in their pitch video" presented at the end of the course.

"It was recently discovered that while the team had met with Syrena, they did not obtain a talent waiver nor permission to use her footage nor the footage of her clients and fans in their video. As such, their title and grant of $7,000 to produce a real content solution for a brand will be revoked immediately. The panel of judges will decide on a new winner in the coming days."

The dethroned team also issued a collective apology in the same statement, although they called it an "oversight":

“We sincerely apologise for using Syrena's videos and her name without clearance for the internal submission of the course proposal. We acknowledge our oversight and accept the disqualification from the competition. We regret any distress caused to Syrena and all parties involved in this incident.”

Interestingly, CC's statement goes on to qualify that the video had no "commercial value" as it was used for the purposes of the course, and also refers to what happened as "this oversight":

"The video did not have any commercial value... however, the Creator Collective wishes to acknowledge that a mistake has been made. To compensate for this oversight, it has offered to create a video for Syrena to which she will own full rights.

The Creator Collective also wishes to apologise to Syrena for any infringement of her intellectual property rights, image and damage to her personal reputation. It also wishes to extend sincere apologies to the Singapore Tourism Board, who was the brand partner that issued the mock brief at the content marketing course."

Also, as we would later discover from Neo, she had requested that BNM clear the points of their statement and apology ahead of it being released, but it was sent out without Neo's acknowledgement.

As of time of writing, Neo told Mothership that BNM has yet to send her a copy of the statement.

Neo told Mothership how she felt about the released statement:

"I'm saddened at this continued mishandling. I find it surprising -- and telling -- that she (de Rozario) had time to speak to everyone else but me."

Ah well.

All images via Syrena- Singapore's First Mermaid's Facebook page

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