Make-up can express or conceal anything, even gender. In a culture that teaches polite behavior, respect and consideration, make-up is the one way in which most Thai’s can express how they really feel. The only other form of uncensored self-expression is found in Thai TV drama’s where the stars can act out how most Thai’s really feel – but that they themselves cannot show. The combination of these two forms of self-expression – make-up and drama, provided the platform for our dramatic Oriental Princess interactive online make-up tutorial series. Online is unrestricted compared to the strict cultural censorship imposed by the Thai censorship board who will reject any form of advertising or brand communication that shows anything that may be considered offensive – this even includes showing a person sitting on a table, as it may encourage rude, impolite and anarchistic behavior.

We aired a nationwide preview on TV to draw the target audience to our interactive TV series. Online media and extensive use of banners added to the growing awareness. Online users also promoted the campaign as we created a share mechanism in each online episode whereby a users answers to clues were automatically shared on their Facebook walls and updates for all their friends to see.

Make-up tutorials are no longer boring. Each tutorial was viewed over 250,000 times with an average of 4 minutes spent per video. That’s 360,000,000 minutes of viewing Oriental Princess make-up demonstrations OR the equivalent of 12,000,000 Tv ads – and although Oriental Princess is Thailand's largest home-grown beauty brand we could never have afforded this sort of mass penetration without the online medium that balanced entertainment and the product. A 40% sales increase in only 2 months demonstrated that branded entertainment not only achieved sales objectives, but in future all our campaigns will move to the online sphere. This campaign was picked up by the national Thai media, fashion and beauty bloggers across Asia. And Set a record sales growth in the cosmetic industry in Thailand.