New advertising medium
as visible as Bangkok's biggest buildings:
"Building-wraps"
By Jon Fernquest
Some people get tattoos. Some buildings get
building-wraps.
Nowadays you can turn a whole building into a gigantic poster with a building wrap. The advertisement in a building wrap follows the outside surface of the building, bending and moving with it, which makes the advertisement very visible and impressive for long distances. Like billboards, building wraps capture the attention of people passing by the building and help strengthen a brand name. Apparently, there are also bus, van, and truck wraps too, as can be seen in the lower half of the photo to the right.
Only 30 buildings in downtown Bangkok are permitted to carry exterior advertising. The number of these eligible buildings with building-wraps in Bangkok increased from 10 to 15 last year.
CMYK Colour is an advertising firm specialising in billboard and building wrap advertising. Building wraps are about 70% of their business with the rest coming from billboards and print ads.
CMYK owns the rights to exterior advertising on eight of the 30 eligible buildings. In 2008 the company is aiming to become the market-leader in the industry with a 70% share in the building-wrap market segment this year. Building wraps accounted for about 60% of the company's 60 million baht revenue last year. This new advertising medium was also responsible for 15% growth by the firm.
The goal is to wrap five buildings this year in prime locations. The company has focused on buildings in the prime areas of Bangkok, Silom and Sukhumvit, rather than in the suburbs or in the provinces. Year-to-date the firm has closed deals for three buildings and actually completed the wrapping of two of them already. It has secured the deals for three buildings since the first quarter of this year and two of them have been wrapped with ads already. The wrapping of another building at Fortune Town is expected to be completed by June.
Only two of the 30 permitted buildings in the city centre are still available for wrapping. CMYK hopes to place advertisements for Thailand's booming automobile industry on these buildings.
Advertising has declined during the current slowdown in the Thai economy and the company has no intention to raise its prices. Since many of the advertising firms clients are high-end companies less concerned about price, the company is still confident that it can achieve its sales target for this year despite the slowdown.
(Source: Bangkok Post, business, page B12, PORNNALAT PRACHYAKORN, temp-link)
Vocabulary:
gigantic - very large มโหราฬ
impressive - makes you think very highly
of it (because it is very large, lifelike, colourful, beautiful, etc)
ประทับใจ
a billboard - a lare sign by the side of
the road with an advertisement ป้ายประกาศ
capture the attention of - make people look at it and
think about it ดึงดูดความสนใจ เตะตา
exterior - on the outside of ภายนอก
eligible - meet the conditions
necessary for ว่าง
print ads - advertisements in
newspapers and magazines โฆษณาหนังสือพิมพ์
market-leader - the company having the
biggest percentage of the market ผู้นำตลาด
บริษัทที่เป็นผู้นำในกลุ่มตลาดสินค้า / บริการของตน
a market segment - a smaller market with
specialised needs within a larger market (See glossary)
an advertising medium - a different way of
presenting advertisements to the public (television, radio, newspapers,
magazines, billboards, on taxis, in the subway, hats, shirts, etc)
ช่องทางในการโฆษณา
prime locations, prime
areas - the
most important places in a city with the highest rents
บริเวณที่ดีที่สุด (เหมาะแก่การทำการค้า อยู่อาศัย เป็นต้น)
suburbs - the areas on the edges of
cities, with lots of residences ชานเมือง
year-to-date - from the beginning of the
year until now ตั้งแต่ต้นปี
the first quarter of this
year - the
first three months of the year, an accounting period for reporting
financial performance of companies to the public ครึ่งปีแรก
closed deals - sales that have been made
already, an agreement has been reached and a contract signed ปิดการขาย
หมายถึงการเจรจาต่อรองนั้นๆ ได้ข้อสรุปเป็นที่เรียบร้อย
has no intention to - is not planning to
ไม่มีแผนการ
clients - customers (more formal)
ลูกค้า
high-end companies - companies that sell high
priced products to richer people whose spending habits don't change as
much during an economic downturn บริษัทชั้นนำ
confident that - have a strong belief that
this will happen [Thai: Man jai] มั่นใจ
a sales target - the amount of sales that a
company plans that a salesperson or whole sales team will sell
ยอดขายที่ตั้งเป้าไว้