A commercial for Five Star chicken shows how elderly Thai people started broadcasting on TikTok to get the attention of their children or grandchildren. BANGKOK – I don’t cry easily, but Thai commercials leave me a snivelling mess. Thailand churns out advertisements that feel more like absorbing films you want to watch on loop.
One five-minute gem which emerged in 2023 managed to marry lonely grandparents, TikTok and fried chicken. The shot opens with a wrinkled face painted blue. The woman it belongs to sports pointy prosthetic ears and a wig of braids in the likeness of Princess Neytiri, a character from the 2009 science fiction flick Avatar.
Probably tickled that she is not doing a very convincing cosplay, she chuckles while the camera is rolling for a TikTok video. Later, she stills herself enough to say: “Granny is really worried about you. I really want to see you.
Come and have a meal with me. It’d make me really happy.” It turns out that she has ventured onto TikTok to get the attention of her granddaughter, who goes by the nickname Balloon.
The younger woman has been too absorbed with her job in the city and social media content on her phone to pay much heed to her granny. Balloon starts tearing up when she watches her grandmother’s TikTok video. She hops onto a train, embraces her granny, and they tuck into a meal of fried chicken from Thailand’s Five Star franchise.
The plot is poignant and the characters are authentic enough for me to not only tolerate the somewhat random cameo of fried chicken, but also almost want to run out and buy some. Such ads are standard fare for Thailand, the regional powerhouse of commercials. The kingdom’s creatives regularly bag awards at regional events like Adfest and international ones like Cannes Lions.
In the 2024 iteration of the Cannes Lions festival held in France, Thai entries won seven out of 58 awards in the film category, making it the best-performing Asian country. “We create ads that are not like ads. We want to make you laugh.
We want to make you cry, and we want to make you scream, and we want to make you feel like you want to share it with someone,” Mr Thasorn Boonyanate, chief creative officer of BBDO Bangkok agency, tells The Straits Times at an interview in his office. “This is Thailand’s soft power.” Dramatic scores, elaborate plot twists, real-world issues and downright wacky humour are packed into these long-form ads much sought after by major brands across the world.
Some commercials can stretch well beyond five minutes. Clients from other countries fly to Bangkok to find agencies to produce them, says Mr Thasorn. “When clients are thinking about setting up a business centre, they think about Singapore.
But when it comes to commercials, they think about Thailand.” Asked why Thais are so good at the game, the goateed 38-year-old with shaggy brown locks leans forward conspiratorially. “It’s actually a reflection of Thai culture,” he says, raising his eyebrows.
“We are a very entertaining country. We love entertaining.” He breaks out into booming laughter.
Dr Marissa Chantamas, dean of Assumption University’s Albert Laurence School of Communication Arts in Thailand, says: “We kid ourselves a lot. We don’t have a very serious world view. Because if you had a serious world view and you lived in this country, you’d probably die very early.
Things go wrong all the time, so you laugh it off.” Political upheavals, corruption, red tape and dismal public transport all become fodder for Thailand’s creatives in search of the next big ad. Thai consumers’ embrace of the random and unexpected also means they are ready to spend in response to a good, punchy commercial.
“It isn’t just about a great ad. It actually sells,” says Dr Marissa. “The consumers here are very much into this sort of communication.
We like a good drama.” The ads pay off, she says. This makes companies selling products as varied as nasal inhalers and luxury cars willing to invest in them.
“It’s not just the big brands that do it in Thailand; sometimes it’s the small brands as well,” says Dr Marissa. But the stakes keep getting higher in this 112 billion baht (S$4.2 billion) industry, with Thai consumers, used to being wowed, barely giving run-of-the-mill commercials a second look.
Ms Jiravara Virayavardhana, chief executive of creative agency Ogilvy Thailand, says: “Our journey in the communication landscape and the global creative community spans over 50 years, during which we have consistently witnessed the extraordinary quality of commercials in the Thailand market. “These commercials are a vibrant blend of creativity, emotional storytelling and cultural resonance that captivates audiences.” Verena Sure TVC One ad that won multiple awards in 2017 marketed a then little-known weight-loss product called Verena Sure.
In a dig at the bureaucracy and petty extortion that Thais encounter in everyday life, a police officer stops a truck along a highway, saying that the meat it is transporting is too fatty. The same officer stops a motorcycle because it contains petrol, which is the same word as “oil” in Thai language. This bizarre behaviour finally makes sense when the camera zooms in on a bottle of capsules that block the body’s absorption of fat – as personified by the cop.
Separately, a gold winner at the Cannes Lions in 2024 was a side-splitting entry from Choojai and Friends agency about a listed housing developer called Sammakorn, which sounds very similar to Sanpakorn, the Thai government’s tax agency. In vignettes lasting over four minutes, a sales executive becomes increasingly desperate as people keep turning up at Sammakorn’s showrooms wanting to pay their income tax. She threatens to kill the company’s designer if he does not alter its promotion poster.
She slaps the company’s name on anything possible, including cans of drinking water and golf carts at its showrooms. She finds every opportunity to enunciate her company’s name. In the end, confronted with yet another taxpayer, she begs to quit her job, but not before picking up an electric guitar and screaming a death-metal style ditty peppered with “Sammakorn”.
“When we are creating something, we go all the way,” says Mr Sunard Thanasanaksorn, managing director of Accenture Song Thailand agency. “If we are creating funny ads, it’s going to be crazy funny..
. When you do emotional ads, you can go all the way to the most emotional moment.” Behind the scenes during the making of a commercial for Thailand’s Five Star chicken.
The country has made a name for itself as a regional powerhouse of commercials. PHOTO: COURTESY OF BBDO BANGKOK Humour, in particular, has been used by Thailand’s creatives to make some of the sharpest commentaries on society. One viral production by a company called Salmon House tackled Bangkok’s infamous bus service No.
8, which the city has tried to overhaul. Plying over 20km from the outskirts to the heart of the city, the service was known for its decrepit buses, rude staff and reckless drivers. Salmon House made a two-minute skit in which a bus conductor welcomes passengers like a flight attendant.
“If there is an emergency, you can use the emergency exits closest to you,” she says, pointing to the bus’ open windows. “If aggressive vocational students come on board, the body armour can be found beneath your seat,” she says, in reference to the violent brawls that break out between students in the city. “When the vehicle is travelling at its highest speed, amulets will be deployed,” she deadpans, poking fun at Thais who put their faith in divine protection.
The video, uploaded online in 2016, has generated 10 million views. It left me in stitches, but also made me ponder the daily indignities suffered by those who cannot afford anything other than buses, the cheapest form of public transport. It was so slick, I wasn’t even riled by the product placement when the bus conductor wheeled out a brand of snacks on a trolley.
With ads so good, I will be happy to buy whatever they sell – if only to keep more of such videos coming. Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you. Read 3 articles and stand to win rewards Spin the wheel now.
