Thai brands failing to engage, says agency

Thai brands failing to engage, says agency

Consumers bored by advertising campaigns

Consumers are losing trust in Thai brands as they stick to similar marketing strategies and campaigns, says advertising agency Y&R Thailand, which conducted a brand asset valuator study in nine provinces involving 2,500 respondents across 130 product categories.

"Most Thai brands don't differ much in marketing campaigns. Consumers feel bored and don't want to engage with the brands," chief strategy and innovation officer Kittipong Veerataecha said.

Brands operating in Thailand saw their trustworthiness fall to 85% last year from 94% in 2001, while the consumer unapproachable rate — the rate that customers cannot be reached — rose to 52% from 33%.

Today, brands are more perceptually redundant across all categories, and the variation between brands is less, Mr Kittipong said.

Some leading brands draw up marketing plans based on previous ones, which can lead to becoming trapped in the same cycle of branding. The brand message is delivered, but consumers ignore or pay less attention, resulting in a failure of communication.

"This is not a sustainable way to do business, which is becoming more intense day by day," Mr Kittipong said.

About 20,000 new brands are registered each year, half of them in the health and beauty sectors, according to the Intellectual Property Department.

Mr Kittipong said brands were no longer fighting within their own industry, as consumers had brand experience even before making their purchases.

The only way to win the perception game is to see the bigger picture, do better analysis and embrace intuition, he said.

"Brands should avoid being the victim of their own achievement," Mr Kittipong added.

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