Not only is the Land of Smiles very sabai sabai, this wonderful country can also be super unserious. You don’t need to live here to know that Thai ads have a knack for taking the most ordinary situations and going completely off the rails. From absurd characters and exaggerated reactions to unexpected plot twists and humour that comes out of nowhere, Thai ads aren’t afraid to be weird. In fact, the weirder, the better.
And perhaps that’s exactly why they work. The Thai ads we’ve compiled know how to entertain first and advertise second.
Brand: Top Charoen Optical
A gang of thieves sets out to rob a bank, only to crack open the safe and find cups of what they believe to be yoghurt. Not wanting to leave empty-handed, they decided to just eat it. The punchline? Instead of robbing a bank, they robbed a sperm bank. They really didn’t see that coming. Clearly, they needed better glasses.
Brand: Siam Commercial Bank
If you know, you know. The OG Thai skill that every food vendor seems to have mastered is the rubber-band routine for tying up plastic takeaway bags. Hard to tie and somehow even harder to open when you’re hungry and ready to eat. We follow a curry-selling lady as she passes the sacred skill down to her daughter. Customers struggle to open their tightly knotted bags but you know what’s easy to open? A Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) account.
Brand: At Ubon
Anyone can slap a ‘100% pure honey’ sticker on a bottle. But how can you tell the honey you’re buying was actually produced by bees? What if the bottle came with physical proof of what happened to the person who harvested it? Real honey. Guaranteed.
Brand: Chaindrite Foam
Our worst dreams come true: a human-sized cockroach, with personality and everything.
A girl enters her house only to find a human-sized cockroach, casually eating her food. As soon as he spots the takeaway in her hand, he demands, ‘What you got there? Noodles?’ She tries to bat him with a newspaper, only to end up crying as he opens his wings and attacks her instead.
She locks him in a room for her own safety, but he continues taunting her from the inside, even asking her to open the door. He then proudly reminds her that cockroaches have been around long before humans, have survived every era and are notoriously hard to kill. That is, until Chaindrite Foam enters the picture.
Brand: Apple
A guy sees the girl of his dreams at the airport and falls in love. Literally. The ground beneath him caves in, slowly sending him down into a hole. The girl walks over and looks down at him. Her hand reaches down as he reaches up, only for their iPhones to touch for a NameDrop. She walks away with his number, while he continues sinking even further into the hole. Classic.
Brand: Dentiste Toothpaste
A newlywed couple on the first day of their marriage, with a narrator asking, ‘What would you do if the first day of the beginning of your life together turned into the last day?’
The new bride wakes up next to her groom, only to profusely throw up. The groom stays by her side, leaning in close to reassure her that, through health and sickness, he’ll always be by her side. Only for her to cover his mouth, because his bad breath is making her sick.
Brand: Smooth E Babyface
Someone wearing a ski mask darts through the streets and rushes into a store. Seeing the masked figure enter, the cashier quickly hands over all the cash. But instead of taking the money, she asks, ‘What are you doing?’ She takes off the ski mask to reveal her allergic, irritated face, blaming the cashier for telling her to use foam to wash her face. Cut to her rubbing actual foam on her face instead of the foam gel cleanser.
Brand: DO Home
An ‘Egyptian pharaoh’ is in front of an unfinished pyramid, calling his worker to check on the rest of the construction materials. The worker tells him he’s searched every dimension and still can’t find what they need until he ends up at a home improvement store in the future. He asks a DO Home employee if they have 10,000 tons of sand, metal and concrete. The employee nods, and the pharaoh celebrates over the phone. Then comes the final question: ‘Do you deliver to the past, around 2600 BC?’
Brand: Sylvania lightbulbs
Every country has its own ghosts, and they’re not all as friendly as Casper. Meet the Thai ghosts: Krasue, a floating woman’s head with her internal organs hanging beneath her; Krahang, a flying male spirit; Nang Tani, the infamous banana-tree ghost; and Pret, an extremely tall and thin ghost with a tiny mouth.
A dad introduces his son to each ghost as they make a spooky appearance one by one during a picnic at a temple in broad daylight. Because with brightness, nothing is scary anymore.
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