Index Creative Village bucks the trend, eyes 6-7% growth this year
ALTHOUGH THE event business looks like suffering a revenue decline of at least 10 per cent this year as companies have cut their marketing budgets, Index Creative Village says it will meet its revenue target of Bt1.7 billion, mainly thanks to a rise in As
Co-chief executive officer Kriangkrai Kanjanapokin said yesterday that by the end of this year, his event-management empire could post a revenue increase of 6-7 per cent, outpacing an industry that has been hit hard by the economic slowdown.
“In this tough situation, a number of companies have decided to cut their marketing and advertising budgets to secure their bottom lines,” he explained.
The company’s core business of creative solutions remains the biggest revenue contributor at 51 per cent, followed by 34 per cent from marketing consultancy, 8 per cent from the lifestyle-experience business unit, and the remaining 7 per cent from other business in Asean countries Myanmar, Vietnam and Cambodia.
Kriangkrai said Asean business was becoming an increasingly key player for his company while domestic activities appeared to going downwards.
To deal with this challenge, his company has teamed up with Kamron “Air” Pramoj Na Ayutthaya, former editor-in-chief of Image magazine, and Whuthipan “Todd” Dantaweesilp, a music and entertainment expert, to develop electronic dance music (EDM) festivals for Thailand and neighbouring countries.
Whuthipan, who is also the adviser for music industry projects to the Thailand Convention and Exhibition Bureau and managing director of First One Organize, said there was room to grow for EDM-related business in Thailand and elsewhere in Asean.
According to last year’s “International Music Summit Business Report” for the Asia-Pacific region, the EDM industry saw a 50-per-cent expansion in the previous four years, while total marketing value was estimated at US$7.1 billion (Bt245 billion). Meanwhile, the Asian EDM industry was valued at around $1 billion, accounting for 15 per cent of the global EBM market. The top three EDM markets were India, Singapore and South Korea.
Index Creative Village plans at least four EDM festivals a year in Thailand, Vietnam and Myanmar. But before rolling out this kind of event in other countries, the first edition of its own “Another World” festival is scheduled for November 5, expected to welcome more than 10,000 attendees and to generate Bt25 million.
