Fight Night: Curious Advertising

A strange kind of advertisement exists here. In fact, upon reflection, these kind of ads were there in Japan, too, albeit only really consistent in places where you could hardly hear yourself talk anyway, like Shibuya. In essence, a car drives past. From that car, or truck, or songthaew, blasts some snippet of loud and energetic pre-recorded audio.

There aren’t many routes that one can take to traverse from the Western hubs of Koh Pha Ngan to Northern beaches. As such, the road below us gets a fair workout. Several of these songthaew taxis seem to be permanently parked at the bottom of the hill, actually. For the most part, I’m not even sure they drive their vehicles. Every time I walk past, the drivers seem to be either sitting with their feet up on the dash, scrolling, lying in a hammock in the back of their truck, or having a smoke and chatting with each other. This isn’t to say that they’re slacking off. Quite the opposite. The service is good, and extremely useful. But the system is different. Many people in Thailand—and throughout China, in particular, too—seem to live out of their workplace for most of the day. These small-scale businesses don’t have consistent clientele throughout the day. But—they might! So, the owners sit and wait patiently. For someone to request a massage, order a Pad Thai, or ask for a taxi ride. Any time in between is their downtime. A starkly different norm from the rigid shift work many are accustomed to in Australia.

Basically I say all of this to highlight the following logic: if your work day has so much downtime, would it not be nice to get paid to just drive around in your taxi whilst you wait for a call? I’d imagine that might appeal. I have no true insight, but I’d guess that’s where this promotional strategy stems from, in part. Also, the small, compact scale of island residences mean that any message can reach a lot more people pretty easily.

So, in all hours of the day, vans will pass by with megaphones attached, trying to get the details of the event du jour to stick in your brain. First, it was Julian Marley and the Uprising, then “tomorrow night, tomorrow night… it’ssssss fight night!” Now, apparently there’s anything round of “full contact Muay Thai fights!” on in Thong Sala, well, tomorrow night.

These promotions are unusually intrusive amongst an advertising industry which prides itself on intrusiveness. They speak to you in your sleep. You’ll just be lying in bed, peacefully enjoying a slow morning and then, bam—fight night! It permeates into the quiet confines of your own home. You’re not even engaging with anything or anyone, but you’re still being advertised to!

That being said, it is quite harmless here in all honesty. I think it just presents a curious stimuli for reflecting about the ubiquity of advertising in our lives, even when we don’t realise it. Given the heavy tourist demographic here, these promotions make sense, and have usually just become a laugh between us when we hear them. Anecdotally, they felt a little more obnoxious in Japan, when combined with the far more stimulating and attention-sucking cityscape already surrounding you.

You know, perhaps we should go tomorrow night…