Swire Properties stages an office musical to engage tenants

Swire has used some clever ways to recruit talent, including giant sticky notes (with one message asking ‘Think the boss’ words are just a song, do you dare sing in public yourself?’), giant posters and QR codes in office lobbies and elevators. Within hours on the first casting-call day, people in the towers scanned the QR-codes for audition details more than 1,000 times.

The Swire Properties marketing spokesperson told Campaign Asia-Pacific that the company has received 170 applications for the musical audition, all with diverse career backgrounds spanning a range of business sectors, including finance, luxury and IT. They work in the some 100 offices in TaiKoo Place and Cityplaza representing firms such as JP Morgan, DBS, Thomson Reuters, IBM, LVMH, Adidas and more.

The musical, Preview of Miss Rose – A Romantic Musical 'Behind a Desk', is a co-presentation with the Theatre Noir Foundation, a Hong Kong non-profit theatrical arts company and its story revolves around the kind-hearted and committed Miss Rose. In the story, she works at a dating and matchmaking agency. She’s a fresh graduate who faces typical office-life stress, including backstabbing colleagues. However, like a small screw deep inside a big machine, Miss Rose may be too small to be noticed, but she’s also too important to miss.

The project offers participating tenants an opportunity to work with theatre professionals including a director, music coach, choreographer and professional cast members. The show will hit the stage at ArtisTree from 25 to 27 July. Admission will be free.

Audition group photo

The musical initiative is part of Swire Properties’ year-round engagement campaign “Dream Big, we are talented”, offered exclusively to its office tenants. It complements other  annual football and basketball events the developer organizes as a way to offer its clientele intangible benefits.

The spokesperson said, “we believe there are many hidden talents in our TaiKoo Place and Cityplaza office community (13 office buildings in total). They get recognized as experts in their professional field, but they are also very talented in their passionate areas.”

Some of the office workers have expressed that the project allows their inner child to come out and they are eager to show off their hidden talents. Their sense of belonging as part of the community is strong, they claim.

“We believe an attractive working environment filled with engaging art and culture events would have a positive impact on employees’ productivity and networking,” the spokesperson added.