Weekly wrapup: Thai mobile-payment drama FTW

FTW or fail

Each week we select one campaign or piece of work that we agree is 'FTW' (for the win) and one that...isn't.

Our FTW selection this week, by a wide margin, is an exuberant campaign from SCB Thailand, with JWT. it features two fellows with interesting haircuts who dramatise the need for mobile payments and the ease of using the bank's UP2ME service.

We particularly like the example below for its musical allusions to Les Miserables (it's a blatant ripoff), its purposely bad singing (we hope) and its tragic ending (one must always examine all sides of a garment before purchasing). In case you wonder why the video has so few views, the version we've embedded is the subtitled one. The native version has received nearly 500,000 views. Here's a link to a new episode released this week.

Good news! We had a hard time finding a worthy recipient for our fail 'award' this week. So we'll just highlight this strange effort by Burts Bees, which is using Vine to dramatise classic works of literature with its products in costume. The stop-motion animation is great. Other then that, we're not sure what these are trying to say. 

Top stories

The most-read items on CampaignAsia.com for the week of 4 through 10 October.

• Facebook appoints Anand Tilak as country manager for Indonesia
• SMG picks Mindshare's Yasir Riaz to lead Indonesia operations
• Rohit Jawa appointed as chairman, CEO for Unilever Philippines
• What women want varies across Southeast Asia: Hakuhodo study
• Hershey signals brand push in Asia
• Upgrade your digital strategy for Google 'Hummingbird'
• Cultural blunders: Brands gone wrong
• How Coke overtook Pepsi in Thailand: Jesus Ferreira
• Hotmob wants to place ads on smartphone lock screens
• HongKongers sleep at Ikea by invitation; Chinese at will

Distractions

1. Fireman saves kitten, brought to you by GoPro, which arguably beats all other brands in making effective use of a YouTube channel: The company has tons of jaw-dropping user-generated videos, each and every one a great ad for the product. This one has been viewed more than 16 million times.

2. Another week, another elaborate setup messing with people's heads in the name of marketing. This one's for the upcoming remake of Carrie. 

3. Another week, another video featuring stable-headed chickens. Is the rise of chickens in advertising just a coincidence, or have the birds hired better agents?

4. And finally...

Thanks for reading Campaign Asia-Pacific. Have a great week.