Damisa Ongsiriwattana + Saharath Sawasathikom team up to form SOUR Bangkok to specialise in the Thai womens’ advertising market

Damisa Ongsiriwattana (Lek), the former Creative Director at Ogilvy & Mather Bangkok and Saharath Sawasathikom (Chy) of CJ Worx, have teamed up to launch new agency SOUR Bangkok.

The first of its kind, SOUR is an advertising agency specializing in campaigns and content for women.

Under the leadership of Ongsiriwattana and Sawasathikom, the agency’s unique positioning is inspired by their foresight in an emerging and ever-growing economic trend, an economy driven by women.

Global statistics reveal that up to 80% of buying power belongs to women. They are the purchase decision makers of products such as cosmetics, drinking water, cars, houses, and even men’s razors. Furthermore, a growing number of women are representing companies’ upper management. Women’s policy making and buying power is therefore expected to grow exponentially in the future. Yet, most consumers feel that advertising targeting this demographic is underwhelming.

And thus, SOUR Bangkok was founded to fill this void within the Thai advertising scene, crafting ads of the new era where selling products alone can be seen as uninspiring. There needs to be content that understands women, created by women for women on every platform.

Ongsiriwattana is a veteran creative with over ten years in the industry. Her body of work exclusively involves women’s brands to national and international acclaim, garnering awards from Cannes Lions, London International Award, AdFest, etc. She has also served as a judge at Cannes Lions.

Sawasathikom and Jinn Paoprapai are founding directors of CJ Worx, a digital agency that recently won the Independent Agency of the Year and Digital Agency of the Year awards in 2016.

Also part of the senior group is Pimmard Leenutaphong was Group Account Director at J. Walter Thompson with over twelve years of experience managing accounts in cosmetics and real estate. Her most recent position was Marketing Manager at LINE Company Thailand where she led the “LINE TV” marketing campaign that generated over five million app downloads to date.

Ongsiriwattana explains the origin of the name SOUR: “Our goal is to tastefully harmonize sensibilities between the brand and the consumer by cooking up campaigns that not only benefit the brand but simultaneously represent women as well. We want to exhilarate consumers with our fresh new flavor of advertising that’s bold enough to cut through the noise and leave the brand message on the tips of their tongues. Because after all, consumers are now the most powerful media channel we have.”

“As a consumer and member of the women’s community, I often find that Thai ads don’t actually understand women, and many times we found that they were written by men. For example, one ad preached that women should reallocate the time they spend on beauty to make themselves smarter instead; that really bothers me. Is there no such thing as beauty with brains? We’re a multi-tasking gender. Simultaneously, it doesn’t mean that our work cannot send positive messages. Women do listen but only when it’s demonstrated that we’re on their side. Only when this has been established will an empowering message have its effect.”

Sawasathikom elaborates: “Femininity is viewed as a weakness, but this vulnerability can be leveraged, trapping men to treat women with care. Many such insights may be applied to the work in order to resonate with women.”