Bangkok, 31 March, 2015 – Thailand’s viral video sensation entitled “I Hate Thailand” has won an award for Best Use of Social and Interactive Media and another three at the Asia-Pacific region’s top annual advertising festival, AdFest.
The 2015 Awards presentation gala was held on 22 March, 2015, in Pattaya. This year, the event was attended by 1,110 delegates from 53 cities, with judges sifting through 3,295 entries to select winners in 18 awards categories.
Produced by the Leo Burnett Group Thailand, the “I Hate Thailand” video won a total of 4 awards in the AdFest 2015 comprising the Lotus Award in the category of Branded Content and Entertainment Lotus, a new category created by the AdFest this year, one Silver Award in the category of Direct Lotus, and two Bronze Awards in the category of Media Lotus and Film Lotus. To further see details of each category, please visit http://www.adfest.com/winnerslists2015.php
The “I Hate Thailand” video is based on a new advertising concept called “unbranding.” It became a popular sensation through social media sharing and attracted more than 2.6 million views up to now. Also, it received over 29,000 likes after it was released via YouTube on 18 November, 2014.
The romantic-comedy short film is about a tourist named ‘James’ who visits Thailand for a planned week-long holiday. He loses his bag containing all his belongings. He then gets “rescued” by a local village girl and recovers his possessions with the help of other villagers. The film ends with James saying he was wrong to have ‘hated’ Thailand when he did not know the country well enough. He ends up staying two years.
Mrs. Juthaporn Rerngronasa, the acting TAT Governor and TAT’s Deputy Governor for International Marketing (Europe, Africa, Middle East and America) said, “The ‘I Hate Thailand’ video has been produced based on research that an ‘unbranding’ advertisement would tend to receive more interest than a conventional branding commercial. The intention of this video is solely to depict the renowned Thai hospitality, demonstrating that Thais are ready to be a good host, and offer a helping hand to tourists who need help.”
“This video is intended for both domestic and international tourists. For the domestic market, the intention is to remind and educate the Thai people to always be a good host and not to take advantage of tourists, but to offer help to tourists when they need it. For the international market, we would like to convey that beyond the beauty of the Thai beaches – one of the main tourist attractions – Thai people are very kind and ready to be a good host to all tourists.”
Click to watch the video: “I Hate Thailand”.
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