How to learn from the "toxic" Thai advertisements?

Whether you are in the advertising industry or not, Thai advertisements will come into your sight from time to time, with their unique twists and turns, and their tear-jerking moments...

You smiled while watching an advertisement, and you cried while remembering a brand. It seems that our sensitive nerves have been touched effortlessly. Thailand is not only a world-famous travel destination, but also a "learning place" for marketers to grow.

We often say that Thai advertisements seem to be "poisonous", easy to be "addictive" and "contagious"... Behind each work is the advertiser's insight into human nature and products. The development of Thai advertisements has also given us a lot of inspiration. It is not just fancy special effects that can attract consumers, and it is not just superb production technology that can make a brand popular. Thai advertisements give people the impression of being "funny and humorous" and have repeatedly won awards. The "humorous label" of Thai advertisements, which have become the representative of Asian advertisements, has been broken by the "sensational and heartfelt" advertising type, and now it has become a polarized state.

Recently, a simple survey was conducted in the marketing circle. Regarding the question "What characteristics do you think Thai advertisements have?", 80.85% of the respondents said they were "sentimental and touching", 59.57% said they were "funny and humorous", 46.81% said they loved to tell stories, and 57.45% said they were "strongly contrasting"...

It can be seen that "sentimental and heartfelt" and "funny and humorous" are the unanimous consensus on the characteristics of Thai advertisements.

Advertising Case

Let’s first look at two types of advertising examples:

The first type is sentimental and heartfelt

Case 1: "A Little Effort"

This advertisement tells the story of a boy who loves to play football but has no football foundation. The coach tells the child's mother the truth. When the mother sees the dejected child, she encourages him to try a little harder. After that, the boy keeps practicing, and at the last minute of a game, a header wins a precious point for the team.

There are many ways to express the topic of "hard work", and this advertisement is an "inspirational chicken soup type" expression that is full of kindness and power.

At the end, the mother said: "I may not be the best mother, because I don't want my child to always be the first. I just hope that he can surpass himself a little bit every day."

The brand logo “Nestle MILO” only appeared at the end. This is Nestle’s malted milk drink, and its Chinese name is “雀巢美洛”. In fact, the product has been subtly implanted in the advertisement.

Case 2: The Birth of an Insurance Advertisement

The creative idea of ​​this advertisement is different from other advertisements in that it is linked to a dialogue between an insurance company and a creative company. Party B tells Party A that a white-collar worker was diagnosed with a terminal disease and cried in the car. Later, he found out that he had bought an insurance policy. In the middle, the narrator kept introducing the insurance company’s phone number.

Because of this insurance, the white-collar workers got through the difficult times. At the end of the presentation, Party A was not satisfied with the ending and felt that "advertisements should not make people sad. It is to be a good advertisement so that people will feel happy and warm after seeing it, because there is always hope in life. With hope, each of us is willing to stand up and fight again..."

At this moment, the camera turned and the narrator was the white-collar worker in the advertisement, and he smiled at this moment.

This advertisement cleverly integrates creativity, narrative style, and brand and product features, making it a true classic!

The second type of humor

Case 3: What do you want?

This advertisement tells the story of a couple who have different opinions on things like driving and eating. There are quarrels and laughter, but in the end, they are surprisingly unanimous when choosing clothes. The advertisement ends with the brand information. It turns out to be an advertisement for laundry detergent.

Case 4: "Long Live Friendship"

This is an advertisement that won the 2018 Cannes Advertising Festival's Film Lion and Entertainment Lion awards. The brand owner is a mobile payment company in Thailand. The advertisement is about a girl going to school in Bangkok. She is worried about not being able to make friends in her new environment. At this time, her friend gives her advice: "It's simple, easy to use, and everyone is using it"... "K+APP". Just like that, from "expressionless" to "smiling", the strong contrast makes people remember the advertisement and the product deeply.

The development of Thai advertising is basically the same as the development of print advertising, radio advertising, and film and television advertising. This has a lot to do with the development of the economy, population, and society. It is also very similar to the stage of Chinese advertising. What we are talking about now are Thai film and television advertising. 1988-1990 was the golden period of Thailand's development. At that time, the production cost of shooting a real estate advertisement was about RMB 7 million. Such prosperity also stimulated a large influx of practitioners and the improvement of professional capabilities...

Of course, in 1997, Thailand experienced a financial crisis, the economy declined, companies went bankrupt, advertising was reduced, and production costs were cut... However, despite this, the Thai advertising industry did not fall into decline. Instead, it became a turning point for Thai advertising.

Why was Thai advertising not affected by the financial crisis but instead rose rapidly?

The first industry reshuffle leads to high-quality products

During the Thai financial crisis, due to the reduction in advertising budgets, creative advertising companies had to rack their brains to think of how to "have great creativity with low cost" within limited funds. The economy led to an accelerated reshuffle in the industry, and "competing for creativity" became the main theme of advertising companies at this stage. As a result, a large number of excellent works were produced, and some even won many top global awards, such as the Cannes Advertising Festival and Oneshow.

The second civilian strategy resonates

There was once a survey in Thailand, which showed that civilians accounted for 85.25% of Thai advertisements, while stars and celebrities accounted for only 3.12%, and the rest featured animals, plants, science fiction characters, etc.

Ordinary people participate in the performances, and the content is simple and down-to-earth. The creative focus is on common scenes in life. For example, the "What Do You Want" advertising case mentioned above incorporates the trivialities and quarrels in the lives of male and female lovers. The popular creativity and the participation of civilian actors have greatly narrowed the distance between the brand and users and created a resonance!

The third national mentality triggers creativity

As a Buddhist country, Thailand is calm and open-minded. Culture and mentality are important factors that influence people's values. The national mentality of being worry-free and full of happiness has also become the source of its humor and creative heart.

What elements should excellent advertising work have?

The development of the entire Thai advertising industry is closely related to the national mentality, economic conditions, and industry reshuffle. As for the advertising itself, what elements should an excellent advertising work (taking Thai advertising as an example) have?

1. Base layer (quality)

There must be quality assurance for advertisements, which means that the level of the production team and the quality of the products must be very good.

1. Content layer (emotional, interesting)

Good content should have two characteristics: "emotional" and "interesting". For short videos, you only need to choose one of them. For long content (such as movies), there will be story twists that make you laugh or cry. In terms of content creativity, Thai advertisements have achieved the two points to the extreme, with exaggerated "interesting" and heartfelt "emotional".

1. Effect layer (useful)

Good content has value in itself, and this value is “usefulness”, which is the effect brought by the work.

1. Practical expressions: For example, it contains a guide or recipes;
2. Value expression: The content of the advertisement will tell us some correct values. For example, in a Thai advertisement, there is a young man who does good deeds every day, donating money to children, giving food to small animals, and helping the elderly push carts... It tells people that kindness will be rewarded;
3. Sales-oriented expression: In the work "The Birth of an Insurance Advertisement", the relationship, use, and value realization of insurance and the protagonist are fully expressed through the creativity of the proposal, which not only resonates with people, but also the repeated telephone numbers, brand information, etc. in the picture are strengthened in the audience's mind, which is very sales-oriented.

In this survey, when asked “What do you think of the combination of Thai advertising creativity and products?” 53.19% of people thought that “the combination is very clever and remembers the product features.”

Thai advertisements are worthy of study and learning by the industry. In recent years, there have been collaborations between Thai advertisements and Chinese brands. For example, Chinese language and Chinese brands are often implanted in some advertisements. During the 618 period in 2018, Tmall created the "While It's Hot" series of Thai advertisements. The amazing reversals, imaginative and humorous plots made people remember the 618 Tmall e-commerce home appliances, beauty and other activities.

Analyzing the development and characteristics of Thai advertising does not mean that domestic advertising is bad, but rather looking at the characteristics and elements of Thai advertising creativity, and the production of excellent works under the concept of "low cost and big creativity".

Looking at global advertising and marketing, the budget determines the production level. As the saying goes, a good cook cannot cook without rice. I do not deny this. The two are not contradictory. We should learn from each other. Regardless of the budget, the root of creativity lies in in-depth insight, understanding consumers and products, and organically combining them. In terms of content construction, how to achieve the "magic reversal", "brain-opening", and "tear-touching" of Thai advertisements...

Strong narrative ability requires cooperation from Party A and Party B. A friend joked that domestic Party A cannot accept such advertisements because the brand is not revealed after speaking for one or two minutes.

In fact, Thailand’s ability to embed products in advertisements is also superb, just like the 618 advertisement shot for Tmall and the insurance advertisement recommended earlier.

In September 2019, an advertisement went viral. It was a short advertisement for Tencent's 99 Charity Day. Two children were saving money to buy a second-hand mobile phone. On the day when they saved enough money, the younger brother's shoes were lost while playing. Looking at his beloved mobile phone, the older brother decided to buy a pair of shoes for his younger brother. When the store owner saw this, he quietly put a dot on the 100 yuan bill to turn it into 1.00 yuan... and finally launched the theme "Let's do good things together on 99 Charity Day".

Such advertisements are deeply rooted in people's hearts. I used to share “Wei Jiadong’s Content Marketing Map” frequently, in which the focus was on what is good content? Among them, "emotional, interesting, useful and high-quality" (abbreviated as "emotion, interest, usefulness and quality") also applies to the "content layer, effect layer and basic layer" of Thai advertising.

Good works require budget, thought and time to be refined, and the same is true for advertising. Today, it is no longer an instruction manual-style expression. From another perspective, it comes from life. In this way, the relationship between the brand and consumers will be closer because of advertising. This is the power of good works, just like the Thai advertisement.

At this point, I wonder if you have gotten rid of the "poison" of Thai advertisements?

Author: Wei Jiadong

Source: WeChat public account: weijiadong2013