This event that I am writing about is with regards to the Adidas Sundown Marathon 2008, which falls on the 31st of May and all the way to the next morning 11am that was a Sunday. Sundown marathon is rather interesting and special as compared to other types of marathon is that it is a night run and both consisting of the distance of 42km as well as the 84km long run. Other than that, the Adidas Sundown Marathon has fun runs for instance 10.5km run. Being located at Changi
Point, it is rather inaccessible because of the limited parking lots and the congested traffic along Changi Village

HiVelocity, being the main organiser of this event, has created or organised many other events, which has to do with sporting. Having Adidas as the main sponsor, it has attracted many people to the event, both locally as well as overseas. HiVelocity is a company that is built based on passion and love for sports and wanting to promote sports to people. This company is rather interesting because it does both product marketing as well as product distribution. They have two different teams; one called the brand team and the other is the event team. The brand team as mentioned above, distributes top international sporting brands for performance sports while the event team specializes in sports marketing and sport event management and the event team has organised the Adidas Sundown Marathon 2008 which was a huge success.

By bringing in Adidas, HiVelocity can increase their brand name as well as brand image by organising this event because due to perception, people will perceive that everything with regards to Adidas is good. Thus it brings out the popularity of HiVelocity and makes people notice them. For HiVelocity is a new established company, more advertising and reputation is needed and therefore they took the challenge to organise the big events for example the one that I am writing about.

This being a local or community event, it has targeted mainly at local audiences for the purpose of social, fun and entertainment value. It also strengthens the sense of belonging. Though this is not exactly a huge event, what make it interesting are the prizes this even offers that attracts overseas runners to take part in this event, making it rather significant.
In addition, this event do not only target at local audiences, but also at a market that loves and have a passion for running. There are relatively many people who love doing sports and therefore created this event to fulfil their passion. Also the goodie bag they gave out to runners are nice, attractive, and it suit the taste of the runners in general, making it worth the amount of money paid to take part in the event. This race attracts all sorts – professionals, amateurs, individual and corporate teams running for themselves and also, for their company, with a total of 6029 participants.

There are a few stakeholders to mention in this event. They have sponsors such as Polar, Ultimate Direction, and some partners in hand are for example Milo, SG Runners and so on. Also, some medias have also taken part in the event by advertising it on banners, Channel News Asia, newspapers etc.

The organiser, HiVelocity has adopted several ways to market this event. This event being a marathon has to be unique and memorable. Thus making it the night run as made it relatively unique as most marathons are held in the morning for example the Standard Chartered Marathon held in December. In addition, the “product” which is the marathon, has something special which was the race was of a longest distance so far in Singapore with 84km. It has leverage the “product” with the two unique elements here and has attracted many people to sign up because of this. Also, HiVelocity has chosen a place that has huge area plan to hold the event and that was the Changi Beach. It was easy to locate and the place was huge to be able to hold many participants. As it was a night run, it was better to run at the beach for the environment and the cool breeze the beach could provide. The place is easily located with taxi, cars and buses in getting there.

As we all know Adidas is a very established and reputable company and brand, thus having a joint partnership could help leverage the name and image of HiVelocity. In addition, with the help of the media, they could promote the partners and sponsors that helped in this event. Having partners and sponsors could determine the type of people who joined the event where more established companies would show how stable the event or how grand the event is and such companies are like Adidas as mentioned, MILO, SMU and so on.

Also, there are many people involved in this event. There are volunteers from SMU and Republic Polytechnic (RP) in a total number of 500, and the main cast who are the staffs of HiVelocity who helped to run the event. In addition, they invited a few VIPs to the are and most of them are from the member of the parliament and last but not least, a special gust of honour Ms Grace Fo Hai Yan, the senior minister of state for national development and education. Even stakeholders were involved in this event, where people from the media comes down to help advertise the event, help promote and even account for the whole event”.

This event has a good way in marketing its event. Though it was quite expensive, it was worth the every single amount of money because the goodie bag was fantastic with Adidas shirt, vouchers and so on which was very useful to runners. There were three period of time for the people to register and these three period of time were the on-going promotions where the earlier the runners register, the cheaper it was and this applied to both team and individual.

Race Category(Distance)
Early Bird Special Period Normal Period
3.11.07 - 31.01.08 01.02.08 - 31.03.08 01.04.08 - 30.04.08

Ultra-Marathon (84km) $100 $120 $140
Marathon(42km) $50 $65 $75


Race Category(Distance) Early Bird - EXTENDED!!!01.03.08 – 30.04.08
Team and Corporate Entry (10.5km each runner) $250



The prizes were grand and making people want to win the top three positions because the prizes include an overseas trip and some cash and even a sponsorship from Adidas. Admission was rather simple, where runners can sign up online at www.sundownmarathon.com and pay with credit card, or head down to register at Athlete’s Circle where more methods of payments were accepted.

In my opinion, I would give a rating of 7 out of 10 for the organisation of the event. It was in order and neat where people will not get confused easily on anything and they did provide things that was in demand or needed by the runners such as the baggage area, massage area and so on, to meet the requirements of the runners. As for the schedule, it was on time and was planned very well for example the time the first runner should reach and the time the last runner should end. It was quite well planned. Some matters were that the organisation of the event was a little unbalanced whereby big tents were crowded and many people until lots of help were needed and those small little tents opened by companies were located at the corner where not many people notice about it. Thus the organising of the place could be thought carefully so that equal attention could be given to all. Also, the carnival was not as grand as thought, probably because it was at night when we went there, and there was not much excited at all. It was mentioned that it will not be exciting for the onlookers but an experience for the runners which they are purely focusing on.

Though this is a local/community event, and aimed at the locals mainly, but somehow it has attracted runners from overseas where they come all the way just to compete in this race. This event being one of the largest marathon races in Singapore for being the first night race in Singapore and probably, the uniqueness has attracted tourist over. Also, the long distance of 84km, is not normally done is set to be the region's longest night running race - will take place around the island's eastern region. The excitement and once in a life time experience can meet some tourist demands who are looking out for something special where their hometown do not provide such event.

Our Singapore tourism mission: Events & Entertainment Capital of Asia (STB, 2008) and there are some ways we can leverage the Sundown Marathon Event to suit the mission of STB. Some ways are like to have a better media management to promote the event whereby the invitations of international media to come down to the event and give an account of what happened so that in future, there will be a huge demand from tourists because of wanting to try something new. Also, even though the use of Adidas has attracted many people, probably, the use of using other brands to join in would help leverage it, and some companies and brands I would recommend is 100plus and so on. In addition, what this event need is the uniqueness to attract more people, and they actually did it in some ways which was the night run in Singapore and the ultra marathon distance of 84km and probably, something more unique and special should be recommended for instance the first night F1 race that cause many people coming from overseas for the special event.

It was a good event to see and experience it for myself, and would really wish to volunteer to get to know more about it because it is something special and unique where everything was held at night. Overall, good for a event and not bad for a new organizing company.