One thing that continually strikes me about TV advertising on the BTS trains has to do with how uniform and perfect the imagery is. Clearly most advertising around the work depict idealized versions of reality in order to sell us products we may or may not need, this is certainly true in the US where the vast majority of advertising depicts 'Americans' as middle class suburbanites with small nuclear families. But the advertising on the BTS (and perhaps on Thai TV in general goes beyond that) because it depicts virtually everyone as comparatively affluent, they live in nice detached homes or spacious high rise apartments/condos. Also, they are almost all 30 years old or younger and have very pale/white skin tones. Having lived in Thailand for over ten years, I have not found this type of person to be the norm in society. The question is why.
Why do the advertisers so consistently use this type of imagery to market their products? They are not stupid people, and thus they must have determined that these type of ads are effective. What does this tell us about marketing communications in Thailand and more importantly about the type of communications that are effective with local consumers? To me it shows that we as consumers are much more interested in how we would like things to be and how we would like to be perceived than perhaps how things really are. This is also show in our television entertainment where most soap operas involve people who live very elite lifestyles. This is different from US and European TV shows that often depict a wide range of socio-economic groups. My question is: why are we so fixated on hi-so lifestyles?
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Well, may be all human would like to have an easy life...and hi-so is the exactly many people want to be...
ReplyDeletedon't need to work so hard.
don't have to worry if there are food for them tmr or not.
By using this type of group to be model, it really can influence people who are 'not adult' yet.
You can't deny that many teen now tends to use brand name things, same as hi-so using, even though they(teen) using the copy one since they can't effort the real brand name goods.
By the way, did you notice that BTS doesn't play many adv...so if you take BTS from Mo-Chit station to Siam station...
you would see adv aroung 10 times.....it is really annoying me -.-"
K. Koi, Thank you very much for your comment - I agree with your point - it is just that to me the difference between real life and life on tv is so extreme as to be depressing. Also, I'm sorry if I implied there were not many ads on BTS - clearly there are too many - commuters like myself become oversaturated with the same ads day-after-day.
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