A Thai video has attracted more than 12 million YouTube views, and counting.
The number of comments attached to it are upwards of 8,000, from all over the world, with more added almost every hour.
The latest TV commercial for mobile operator TrueMove caused this big buzz when it was launched recently.
Titled Giving is the Best Communication, the ad has been uploaded to YouTube where it has attracted the aforementioned views and comments.
Most of the online feedback _ in Thai, English and Spanish _ is positive, saying how touching the commercial is, how it "rocked me to the core" as one commentator said, and how it made them cry.
What is the ad about?
In just over three minutes, the commercial shows a young boy getting caught stealing a bottle of medicine and a few packets of painkillers. A noodle vendor, however, asks him if his mother is sick. The boy nods.
The noodle man then pays for the stolen goods, and tells his daughter to give the boy a bag of soup to take home.
The story then moves to 30 years later. The noodle man is shown still giving free food to the needy. But suddenly, he falls to the ground.
Cut to a hospital scene. His daughter, now grown up, is shown a bill of more than 790,000 baht for her father's treatment. She is shown sitting by herself and crying.
The story then moves to a scene inside a hospital room. The daughter, who is sitting by her father's bedside, wakes up to find a letter. In it is a new bill with all the expenses revised to zero, and a note saying the debts were paid for 30 years ago with the bottle of medicine, three packets of painkillers and a bag of soup.
The note is signed by a Dr Prajak Arunthong. The ad then juxtaposes a bespectacled doctor studying a row of X-rays with the poor and dirty boy looking up at the noodle vendor who gave him and his mother another lease of life.
"Giving is the best communication," the story concludes, with the slogan on screen.
There are two things I have learned from the commercial and its popularity.
First, the power of marketing is very strong, capable of overriding a sense of reality sometimes.
The point is that the commercial has become very popular and touched many people's hearts despite the advertiser, TrueMove, often being accused of failing to do so with its real-life customers.
Early this year, the consumer protection panel of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) revealed it had received a "deluge" of consumer complaints against poor service by telecom operators offering 3G packages, with TrueMove among them.
Also, last week the NBTC said another company in the True group, TrueVisions, tops consumer complaints from pay-TV subscribers, including allegations of poor equipment maintenance and overly aggressive fee collections.
Second, the real power behind the commercial lies not with its sentimental motto, but in the concerns commonly felt among the public over expensive hospital bills.
The story in the TrueMove commercial may be fictitious, but everyone in this country knows that high treatment costs are real if we are stricken with any major diseases.
The image of the noodle man's daughter sitting by herself and crying is a heart-rending one for most viewers because we all feel we could be her _ fearful, desolate and hopeless against an affliction and the unaffordable cost of its treatment.
The underlying reason for the popularity of this commercial makes me wonder why politicians and policy-makers in this country have failed to grasp a worthy cause that would endear them to the public.
Both the ruling Pheu Thai and opposition Democrat parties are battling each other in their presentations of mega-investment plans for the country's infrastructure. While I have no objection to investing in the country's rail and road links _ they are long overdue _ I doubt if that should be the biggest agenda for a country that will face a serious problem of caring for its ageing population in the coming decades.
We have moved in the right direction with our universal healthcare coverage. But more work can be done to make it better, to offer more choices for members of the middle class. Some people say a new election could be forthcoming. I wish to see a Yingluckcare or Abhisitcare taking centre-stage during a campaign, not just how to spend 2 trillion baht on building roads and railways.
Atiya Achakulwisut is Deputy Editor, Bangkok Post.