SMEs Brand Development Project through Consumer-Oriented Characterization

After CHANGE 2021: Visual Character Arts, a project to create characters based on consumers’ preferences, had encouraged visual artists to create over 100 visual characters to help expanding businesses and acted as another income venue during 2021. In 2022, CHANGE by CEA decided to continue down the same path with a similar project, however larger in scale, CHANGE 2022: Visual Character Arts for SMEs. This brand development project aims to help SMEs build visual characters that attract consumers. This project takes place from February to July and is designed to push the use of visual characters in developing business among small and medium enterprises (SMEs) across Thailand in order to create stronger branding, added value to the products and services, higher profit and to provide an economic stimulus during the spread of COVID-19.

4 Types of Participating Entrepreneurs

1. Entrepreneurs who wished to use favored characters from CHANGE 2021: Visual Character Arts. 
2. Entrepreneurs who wished to obtain new characters through the service from groups of designers who have partnered with our project have received well responses from educational institutes from all over the country. These include Chiang Mai University, University of Phayao, Phuket Rajabhat University, Sripatum University, Naresuan University, Burapha University, Phetchaburi Rajabhat University, and Suranaree University of Technology.

3. Entrepreneurs who wished to obtain new characters by their own effort.
4. Entrepreneurs who wished to revise and change their old characters to better tackle commercial challenges.
 
Things entrepreneurs anticipate to attain

1. A character for their businesses that had been settled with designers in terms of right to ownership.
2. A plan or a guideline to commercial use of the character as a result of close consultation with experts
3. A commercial character prototype fit for print media, multimedia, etc. would be granted to each of the selected 40 enterprises according to suitability.

PROJECT UPDATE

Stage 1: 23 - 25 February 2022

Experts on using characters for branding from both Japan and within Thailand provided necessary knowledge to participating entrepreneurs and designers via online channels. For further detail please visit www.tcdc.or.th/th/all/events/1452

Stage 2: March - April 2022

1. Entrepreneurs and designers collaborated to create characters and plan to use the characters commercially. The collaboration was guided by experts who supervised online.
2. We selected 40 plans for commercial use to further develop.

Stage 3: May - July 2022

Developed prototypes from the 40 selected plans in order for SMEs to promote their sales through a variety of medium such as print media, multimedia, as well as turning the characters into souvenirs.

 
Positive Impacts

1. We anticipated the project’s end results to generate a total of five million baht to the selected 40 enterprises in added value.
2. Entrepreneurs continued to employ these characters by themselves which added an estimated 10-million-baht value to all 40 selected enterprises.
3. Both government and private agencies showed an interest in buying or requesting the right to use characters. This created income and fame for the 40 character designers. Furthermore, these characters were representations of different regions across Thailand which, in a way, promoted local tourism.