Kobe Case Study – Mentoring SG

How Creator Stories Made Mentoring Personal Enough to Ask For

What makes Gen Z influencer marketing work in Singapore? Relevance must arrive before the call to action.

For MentoringSG, Kobe built a creator campaign around a simple truth: young people rarely connect with mentorship as an abstract programme. They connect with the moment someone admits they once felt lost too.

That strategic decision shaped the creators, stories and content roles across the campaign. It helped MentoringSG generate 1.89 million plays, 1,590 saves and shares, and audience comments that moved from emotional recognition to direct mentoring questions.

The challenge: make mentoring feel relevant before asking for action

Mentoring can create clarity and direction during important life transitions. Yet the category carries a natural barrier: trust.

For a young person navigating school, work or an uncertain next step, mentorship can sound formal and distant. A programme description explains the offer. It does little to prove its value when someone genuinely needs guidance.

MentoringSG therefore had three communication jobs:

1. Build the case for mentorship through evergreen storytelling.
2. Generate interest in the National Mentoring Summit.
3. Direct attention towards the #OneGoodShop content series.

The solution was #OneGoodTalk: a shared platform showing how one meaningful conversation can shift someone’s direction.

The insight: young people trust lived experience

Gen Z audiences recognise polished promotion quickly. They also recognise emotional truth.

The strongest entry point was uncertainty creators had already lived through: feeling lost after school, navigating an internship, building a freelance career or making decisions without a clear reference point.

This changed the creator strategy. Audience size remained useful for distribution, but story fit became the primary creative filter.

Kobe selected creators to play distinct roles:

• Relatable voices reflected familiar struggles and made audiences feel seen.
• Aspirational voices showed what progress could look like.
• Community-driven voices brought the message into culturally and socially relevant conversations.

Every creator needed a credible reason to discuss mentorship. Content began with lived tension, then introduced mentoring as a practical source of perspective.

The idea: one campaign, three creator roles

The campaign operated through three content pillars.

Always On: build the human case

Always On creators shared personal gaps in knowledge, confidence or direction. These evergreen stories gave mentorship a human entry point through decisions creators had struggled to make.

National Mentoring Summit: bring the experience closer

Summit content introduced the flagship event through creator perspectives and peer-led formats, making the experience feel more approachable.

#OneGoodShop: extend the story

Creators connected personal ambitions and uncertainty with the #OneGoodShop series. Reactions, behind-the-scenes moments and relatable hooks created a bridge to longer-form stories.

Together, the pillars created a journey from recognition to curiosity. Performance strengthened when the creator’s own experience carried the message.

Why the content worked

@reefkey__ became the clearest example.

Known for an upbeat and adventurous persona, he used a more vulnerable story to discuss self-employment, uncertainty and the role mentorship played in helping him navigate difficult decisions.

Viewers stayed with @reefkey__’s story for an average of 27.5 seconds, nearly seven times longer than Kobe’s benchmark dataset.

The same post generated 286 saves and 144 shares, alongside direct mentoring questions and supportive responses. People found something useful enough to keep and relevant enough to pass on.

One comment captured the emotional timing:

“Feel like this found me at the right time.”

Others moved closer to action:

“Can u be my mentor?”

“Question is: how do you find a good mentor?”

Creator stories made mentoring personal enough to ask for.

The results: attention with signs of consideration

Across the current campaign reports, the content generated:

• 1.89 million plays

• 1,590 saves and shares

• Approximately 60% of all comments from the story-led Always On pillar

The metrics show distribution, retention, circulation and where the strongest conversation happened.

Together, the campaign results show active consideration. Audiences stayed with the stories, saved the advice, shared the content and asked how mentoring could become part of their own lives. For a service built on trust, that curiosity is a meaningful outcome.

What brand marketers can learn

High-consideration topics need a human reason before they need a link.

For brand marketers planning a Gen Z influencer marketing campaign in Singapore, the MentoringSG campaign offers three practical lessons.

1. Cast for narrative credibility

A creator’s lived experience determines whether the message feels earned. Follower count cannot rescue a weak connection between creator, audience and subject.

2. Give every post one clear job

Awareness, event registration and off-platform viewership require different creative behaviours. A post becomes weaker when it carries too many instructions.

3. Measure what audiences do with the message

Plays establish scale. Watch time, saves, shares and relevant comments reveal whether the content created deeper value.

The most useful influencer strategy connects these signals to a behavioural journey: what audiences watched, kept, shared and asked.

Turning influence into relevance

Influencer marketing earns attention through people. Its strategic value comes from choosing the right voice, tension and role for every piece of content.

For MentoringSG, #OneGoodTalk became a creator system that helped young audiences recognise their own uncertainty, stay with the story and begin asking for guidance.

That is where influence becomes useful.

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