How To Catch The Bangkok Journalist

I’ve been to countless press conferences. Mostly the content draws you to the event. Maybe there’s a promising photo op. It’s a habit though in Thailand that some lunch or gift has to be offered, otherwise hardly any journalist would turn up.

But gosh look what flew into the mailbox: “You are cordially invited to attend the Press Conference on The Unveiling Of The World’s Largest Permanent Orchid Garden (with more than 250 species!) at The Nai Lert Park Hotel …”

The catch - further down: “All Press Journalists, Reporters, Editors, Photojournalists, News Photographers, News Camera crew are urged to bring along their business cards as there will be, besides the usual Press-Giveaways, a lucky draw for twenty-five household gifts from Central worth more than 200,000 baht.”

Note: “Besides the usual Press-Giveaways” … Don’t you love to be a journalist in Bangkok. Well, at least for me the event was a no-show. Even though the glamorous affair promised a who’s who of Bangkok’s political, business and lifestyle world. Hmm.

Such as the Thai celebrities Mario Maurer, Kwan Usamanee, Dome Pakornlum, Peuy Panward (!), Nat Dhephasadin Na Ayudhaya Tact Tarunyu, and and. Names you never heard of?

How about the special side fashion show with the “Orchid Boys” and the Orchid Garden Creation featuring prominent male models in underwear made up of orchids only? And naked they were. Beyond the flowers.

What an attention grabber.

As you have to go to great lengths to grab some attention in marketing-hyped Bangkok.

I wonder what they come up with next.

A fruit show. Covering with longans.

Missed that pseudo-naked flower fashion show too. But Xpress was there for you.

The story though doesn’t tell us which journalist hit the jackpot.

Ah, and don’t miss that Hotbed of Flowers at the Nai Lert Park Hotel from August 22nd and 24th.

No wrong expectations though. It’s purely a flower show with no naked model anywhere.

A purely public and social affair to raise 38 million baht for the Kidney Foundation of Thailand.

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Comments

17 Responses to “How To Catch The Bangkok Journalist”

Matt on July 23rd, 2008 3.39 pm

We once had a bowling competition where I almost won a DVD player.
BangkokDan on July 23rd, 2008 3.50 pm

Point being how buyable/bribable/purchasable the local journalist is. As an unavoidable consequence of meager salaries?

BangkokDan
Dr A P Nikhil on July 23rd, 2008 10.20 pm

Hi … Thanks for the coverage … I am the guy who organized the event and PR aspects of it and guess what … we got a total of 532 media covering the event which has become the talk of the town! And the coverage that we had in the Thai media and also international media is phenomenal … including the wire agencies. Some other first that we did was we had specially designed press kits with a free pre-loaded thumbdrive of a 1 gigabyte capacity preloaded with pictures and information and also every media that came went away with a bottle of wine worth a 1,400 baht. So next time anybody wanna PR services … call me na.
BangkokDan on July 23rd, 2008 10.27 pm

Those are astonishing figures Dr A P Nikhil. The wine bottles alone require a budget of over half a million.

BangkokDan
Dr A P Nikhil on July 23rd, 2008 11.43 pm

Hi - we spent a total of 1.9 million baht on the Press Con alone but my company raised a total of 17 million baht alone through corporate sponsorships for the setting-up of the garden and also the marketing aspects. The success of the Press Con is also attracting numerous other sponsors at the moment. I have a few more other crazy Press Cons coming up soon for a few other clients and as the you are on my mailing lists, you will be informed. Regards
Andrew on July 25th, 2008 7.56 am

You had 532 members of the media attended your event, or you achieved 532 news clippings? I suspect it’s the latter, and to be honest that’s pretty easy to do in these days of RSS feeds, free press release distribution services and the like. When we launched our magazine last year we had close to 1,000 mentions in all. I’m sure everyone would agree that is the quality and not the quantity of coverage the counts. I’d rather have one Reuters or AP story than 10 stories on non-descript and meaningless websites.

If you did physically have 532 members of the media attend your event then I congraultate you as I’m sure it would be a record number for Thailand.

On the subject of PR freebies (and incidentally we - the only global business magazine in Thai - did not get an invite to this event) my journalists are not allowed to accept these sorts of gifts. The Code of Standards they abide by prohibits it. You can see that at http://www.businessweek.co.th/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=39&Itemid=67
Dr A P Nikhil on July 27th, 2008 9.24 am

Hi Khun Andrew, I am so glad that we had an email from you as yes, Businessweek is a highly esteemed magazine and we have always been trying to get hold of your editorial team for various of our client’s stories. Yes, as a PR practioner, we respect honest coverage and we too do not practice influencing any journalists from writing only from our perspective nor do we want to influence contents and editorial perspectives. Our Press Conferences only normally focus on stories that have coverage value … The World’s Largest Orchid Garden and with the constrains that the local Tourism industry is going through, it surely befits coverage. Our practice of giving gifts is only as a gesture of thank you to the journalists for coming to our events and most importantly, no project or business can be successful without the support of the media, and we always want to reciprocate that through our gifts and gestures. In no way is it to be construed as bribery, etc. … in this current times , if wines,thumbdrives and lucky draws with households are deemed as bribes … lol! I would consider cash gifts of 10,000 baht about to be really bribes and its time that many media organisations revise those rulings.

As for the event, we actually had a 612 persons physically attend the as from the guest form registrations but after identifying their sources and media that they represented,It was a total of 532 media that was represented of which 84 were foreign media. Yes we did have Reuters there but not AP. We did send your esteemed magazine an invitation and I will actually check in out as to which email and fax it was sent out to. Give me a week and I will be posting up the list of all the attendees and also pictures and a thank you note on my site. With regards to someones comments about my site, being a busy PR company, we focus on promoting our clients and rarely have the time nor resources to promote ourselves (except maybe on this blog … thanks for the opportunity) and as such my web is not really updated but if you were to sign in, u will have access to a lot of information. We also keep our clients lists confidential for a variety of reasons.

We have been receiving daily coverages in most of the Thai media and also from some of the foreign media in Singapore, Australia, but mostly from Japan, Korea and China. Also had a nice comment from a staff at the nation, that that particular issue of the free daily Xpress has been quickly snapped up and there were calls from its stockists that day demanding more stocks to be replenished. Anyway, we hope that an esteem magazine like yours will not consider stories like Thailand having the World’s Largest Orchid Garden to be trash and not support worthy projects for this country. Once again a sincere thanks to all the media that came and supported the event.
Andrew on July 28th, 2008 6.50 am

Dr. Nikhil. Thanks for responding to my comments here. You might also want to look at what I wrote on my personal blog too?

I still find your claims that 532 bone fide members of the media attended your event, and 84 were foreign, somewhat difficult to believe. Please do post a list of the outlets these people represented as I’m keen to see. I’m sure it would be excellent PR for your company too, showing how many members of the press you were able to attract.

As for BusinessWeek Thailand, we get many, many invitations to events that are simply not relevent to our target audience. Please do not take this personally Sir, but the fact that many PR companies feel their story is something we MUST be covering shows a lack of understanding about our product, our target reader and our style of journalism. Your event is certainly not trash and I wish you every success, however it’s simply not something that we would cover in our magazine.

I welcome any press releases or invitations you may wish to send about events you are working on. The email address (which is available on the contacts page of our website) is news@businessweek.co.th.
Beau on July 29th, 2008 5.53 pm

I went there and was quite disappointed because I wanted to see that world’s largest orchid garden but they said it hadn’t been built yet!!
Andrew on August 4th, 2008 5.20 pm

I’m still waiting for the promised list of 532 media (of which 84 were foreign media) that attended the press conference. Like I said it should be a great PR opportunity for the organizing company to show the level of interest it can generate.
BangkokDan on August 4th, 2008 5.25 pm

Maybe you remain overly optimistic Andrew.

BangkokDan
ohobangkok on August 5th, 2008 1.58 pm

You can see these sexy models pictures here

http://www.dailyxpress.net/specials/photogallery/showsection.php?id=32

from Dailyxpress
Andrew on August 5th, 2008 3.21 pm

Yeah, perhaps so, but if someone makes bold claims and promises they need to substantiate them. I live in hope.
Khun Wasana on August 7th, 2008 10.53 am

Lol! …

(…)

CENSORED - no inflammatory, insulting and threatening contributions tolerated.

BangkokDan
Khun Wasana on August 8th, 2008 9.59 am

BangkokDan … what pussies you are, must be Andrew’s Fuck Buddy! Anyway, read our comments about Andrew and Business Week and your site in Thai Rath … we Thai journalists know what to do too!
BangkokDan on August 8th, 2008 10.08 am

Khun Wasana - as offered to you by email we welcome your views in a contribution.

We welcome any well researched, well founded story - and absolutely will publish it.

But no derogatory language please.

For slander we offer no space, honoring the true Thai tradition of mutual esteem and respect, practiced by this site.

Yours -
BangkokDan
Andrew on August 8th, 2008 5.53 pm

I am not sure what was said but I’d happily discuss anything I have written in any post or comment. My email address is on my blog.

I am not sure what is meant by “We Thai journalists …”? All my journalists are Thai. I’m also not sure about the reference to Thai Rath. I’m sure that any publication is going to ensure everything it publishes is factual, balanced and correct.