One of the features of the Koh Phangan full moon party is the 'bucket' concept of selling and consuming alcohol. Basically the vendors sell the partygoers a 250-300ml bottle of hard liquor and accompanying mixers, served with ice in a 1-litre plastic bucket- see image. They come in different 'mixes' of alcohol and different brands and are priced from 200Baht for local you-might-go-blind whiskey brands to over 400Baht for 'premium' labels. For all means and purposes though, every stall on the beach sells exactly the same product, at pretty much the same (likely cartelised) price points.
So with some 60-odd makeshift stalls lined up at the beachfront, how does a stallowner differentiate? Well, the usual volume-discounting happens, some marginal product differentiation (extra fresh piece of lime) and some cross-product bundling (comes with neon body paint).
What was most interesting for me though was the branding of each stall. The Thai stallowners would take on a caucasian name for their stall. This helps the mostly Aussie and British crowd remember the stall names, but more importantly, this brings them over to pose and take photos either because the stalls are named after them, or after their friends back home. From there, the stallowners' sales skills takes over and establishes as the customer's 'favourite bucket stall' (e.g. the 'Emma' stall snagged this blogger). To maximize traffic, the most popular names are used - Alex, Jack, Jamie, etc), with some targeted stalls going for more Russian sounding names. Photo below illustrates best -this was taken early in the evening before the crowds came in.
The simple takeaway here is that companies need to think about the target customers when branding and naming themselves or their products. At minimum, do no harm with the name. There are plenty of funny examples of this mistake - Aass Classic Beer anyone? It takes incredible product quality and execution to save a poorly named product, the IPad for instance is an exception, not the rule.
Companies should choose names that gives them an edge within their target market - this implies being clear upfront on who that is! In the digital world, this then also needs to meet all the other requirements like ease of search, length and domain name availability. Not an easy task at all when all the constraints are considered.
(For those keen on seeing more of what a Full Moon Party looks like, this photoblog by Asher Floyd has some very good shots and commentary)
