‘Masita’ Korean-style roasted seaweed introduces Big Size and 2 flavors of seaweed rice seasoning
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2022
“Masita”, the market leader in Korean-style roasted seaweed, serves 2 new products: Big Size Roasted Seaweed and 2 flavors of Seaweed Rice Seasoning to enhance the Korean trend that has influenced consumers in Thailand, highlighting the strength of premium quality grade seaweed from Korea with no msg.
Mr Titiporn Thammapimookkul, Chief Marketing Officer of the Boonrawd Trading Co Ltd, announced that Masita will penetrate the seaweed market at the end of 2022 by launching 2 new products: 1. Big Size Korean-style roasted seaweed, original flavor, size 20 grams, and 2. Seaweed Rice Seasoning, size 40 grams, 2 flavors: Original and Korean Spicy to fulfill consumers’ needs and be ready to fit the hot Korean trend.
“Masita” has always been the original of the Korean-style crispy seaweed, which is characterized by the use of high- quality ingredients from Korea and no msg. The highlight of the new product is the Big Size of Korean-style roasted seaweed, which is the largest in the market and comes with a full flavor and aroma of sesame oil.
Masita is expected to boost the consumption of products more in line with the Korean food culture, which influences Thai people to use roasted seaweed as one of the key ingredients. For example, they eat roasted seaweed with grilled food, pickled salmon, or make seaweed rice (kimbap).
In addition, seaweed rice seasoning is one of the most popular menu items among consumers, enhancing the taste of any meal or favorite menu as well. For example, you can sprinkle it over steamed rice or ramen, which is expected to suit consumer trends that prefer Korean dishes or home-cooked meals.
The Big Size Korean-style roasted seaweed large sheet, original flavor, size 20 grams, and Seaweed Rice Seasoning, size 40 grams with 2 flavors: Original and Korean Spicy will market via leading retail stores and supermarkets such as Lotus, Big C, The Mall, and online channels at Singha Online.
The overall seaweed market in 2022 is worth about 2.3 billion baht and expands 24.1% year on year. The roasted seaweed segment has a larger market share, as consumers are more health conscious. Masita has a strong market share in Korean-style roasted seaweed at 33.8% (source: Nielsen, August 2021 – July 2022).
PTG improves quality of life of school children and locals in Lampang province
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2022
Thailand’s leading energy company, PTG Energy Plc, is continuing its corporate social responsibility (CSR) campaign titled “PTG Volunteers Leave No One Behind” with a focus on benefiting local communities and the environment in the provinces where the company operates.
On November 19, PTG volunteers visited Ban Pa Tan Kum Muang school in Pong Saeng Thong subdistrict of Lampang province to donate scholarships, learning materials, sports equipment and medical supplies to four schools in the subdistrict.
Forty students were granted scholarships of 2,000 baht each to support their education. Ten children of PTG’s employees in Lampang province also received scholarships of 1,000 baht each.
PTG also donated 200 bags of oyster mushroom substrate and 200 young frogs for the school’s mushroom sheds and frog ponds to use as ingredients for the school lunch.
The PTG volunteers also released 3,000 Nile tilapia fish into the school’s reservoir to serve as a food source for 11 villages in Pong Saeng Thong subdistrict. They then visited bed-ridden patients in 10 households to offer them survival bags. The CSR activities concluded with the planting of 200 plants in front of the community hall, as well as the donation of 300 vegetable plants to villagers to grow at their houses.
PTG president and CEO Pitak Ratchakitprakarn said that throughout 33 years of operating in Thailand, the company has always been committed to helping the society, improving people’s quality of life, and supporting the communities in various aspects such as environment, education and public health.
“This is the seventh time that we organised “PTG Volunteers Leave No One Behind” campaign in provinces that have PTG’s oil reserves. The company have a long-standing relationship with locals of Pong Saeng Thong subdistrict, so we held the CSR activities here to benefit the local communities,” he said.
Pitak added that the “PTG Volunteers Leave No One Behind” campaign has won the “CSR of the Year 2022” title at the Thailand Top Company Awards 2022. Another activity under the campaign is called “PT Brighter Vision”, which has provided 2,300 pairs of eyeglasses to underprivileged elderly people.
PTG ran the two campaigns in parallel, leading a team of ophthalmologists to examine the eyes of elderly and bedridden patients in each community and prescribe glasses as needed. After the November 19 activity, 500 seniors in Pong Saeng Thong subdistrict will each have a new pair of glasses to help make their daily life easier.
Since its establishment, PTG Energy Plc has been committed to supporting communities and improving local people’s quality of life, in line with the company’s motto of “creating happy bodies, happy minds, and a happy society”.
ABeam points out the benefits of Data Democratization
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2022
Data management that allows for high and convenient accessibility to all can lead to better data-driven business decisions and long-term success for organizations
As businesses grow, the data that organizations and enterprises created, stored, utilized, and accumulated over the course of their transaction expands.
Data is as useful as its management, and one way to maximize the use of data is to make it available and accessible to as many staff as possible to reap its best potential.
Traditionally, data is stored separately and managed, segment by segment, with its own IT or specialist team. When a need for data arises, a staff member usually makes a request to the relevant party which could take a while to respond.
And in some cases of overloading work for IT talents, the response to such request may arrive too late or not at all. Democratization of data, which is the practice of making data accessible to all in a user-friendly manner, is one approach to tackling this problem.
Technological research centre Gartner identified data democratization as one of the top tech trends of the decade. Data democratization is the ability for digital information to be accessible to the average end user.
The goal of data democratization is to allow non-specialists to be able to gather and analyze data without requiring outside help. Essentially, it is a process that enables everybody within an organization to access and understand their data in order to make better data-driven decisions and therefore create growth and long-term success for the organization.
The benefit for the employee is to get the most out of every data point, boosts their confidence to tackle data problems and hence help the entire organization to make aligned judgments and better choices. Data democratization also brings greater customer insight as the whole organization grasps all aspects of the data, and with the right usage and analysis, the organization can deliver a superior customer experience.
Moreover, data democratization can help the organization make timely decisions, confidently adjust its business strategies, and make proactive judgments.
To successfully implement data democratization, an organization must fundamentally transform their digital infrastructure so that everyone can access all the data from one source. This can be achieved by using Data Virtualization, the complexity of accessing disparate sources of data is hidden from the data consumers. Data Virtualization platforms will also help to ensure that data privacy is respected, and data security policies have complied.
And to enable everyone to properly utilize the data without the help or assistance of IT talents or specialists, organizations should promote machine learning or advanced analytics automation tools. An Automated Machine Learning platform (AutoML) provides a full range of functionalities that support the lifecycle of a machine learning project from access and preparation of data to machine learning model design, training, and evaluation to the deployment and monitoring of the deployed models.
These platforms enable employees with different levels of technical know-how – from no-coders to low-coders to coders – to easily perform advanced analytics without IT help to truly create value through democratization.
Finally, everyone in the organization should be educated about data democratization, with full support from management. Continual evaluation and improvement of processes are also vital to keep data democracy thriving and beneficial. It is important to realize that data democratization is a journey instead of an end-state, consisting of ongoing activities driving the organization towards successful data democracy.
ABeam Consulting (Thailand) provides advanced analytics consultancy services globally and has successfully implemented technology solutions that help our customers move closer to achieving data democracy in their organizations and enterprises. In addition to technologies, ABeam can also advise on planning for and implementing a roadmap that is tailored to each customer’s situation and objectives.
Why watch the whole movie when you can watch recaps?
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2022
A growing number of YouTubers who create recap videos summarizing mostly movies and dramas are enjoying popularity among viewers who appreciate their convenience.
YouTuber Go Mong Tube, who started his channel back in 2016, is a prominent player in the field. His channel, which mainly recaps Korean movies and dramas, has more than 600 videos and over 2.14 million subscribers. One of the most popular videos on his channel is the Indian hero movie “Krrish” that has racked up more than 24.7 million views. The channel’s accumulated views have reached over 1.1 billion.
Go Mong Tube recently expanded into making videos summarizing Naverwebtoons.
Another recap YouTuber, G Movie, has over 2.41 million subscribers. His channel has over 400 videos and more than 985 million accumulated views.
Why the popularity?
What these star recap YouTubers share in common is that they retell the movie or drama with a touch of humour.
“I watch movie recap channels because they are even more entertaining than the actual films. I think humorous YouTubers can turn movies that are awful into super fun recap content,” Kim Yoo-jin, 31, said.
Some viewers say that these recap videos can be helpful for those who do not wish to spend time watching long films.
“I got used to watching short-form content like Instagram Reels and TikTok, so it became difficult for me to sit down and watch a long movie. Also, recap videos get to the point right away. I think it suits Koreans who are always so busy,” Park Eun-mi, 38, said.
Youn Young-in, 32, finds recaps helpful at work.
“Everyone said they watched ‘My Liberation Notes’ at the time, but I do not usually enjoy watching K-dramas. So just to be part of the conversation, I watched recap videos and it helped me a lot when I had to make small talk at work,” Youn said.
Culture critic Jung Deok-hyun pointed out that people’s fear of missing out is one reason they turn to recap content.
“If there is a certain trending content, Koreans tend to feel a lot of pressure about how they cannot be part of the conversation if they did not watch it,” Jung said.
He added that the dramatic increase in content following the appearance of different streaming platforms has made it even more difficult for people to keep up with all of what’s trending.
“It became difficult to even for me to watch them all. So people are tempted to watch recap videos that summarize and shorten the original versions,” he added.
A boon for the content industry?
No matter the reason for watching recap videos, this content does have a positive impact, especially on the independent film industry.
In 2018, when the Korean independent film “Park Hwa-young” (2018), which was released on July 19, was about to be taken down from the few local theatres that screened it, YouTuber Go Mong Tube posted a recap video of the film on Aug. 16.
The video immediately became popular with over 10 million views and the film stayed on in theatres for another month.
Film distributors then jumped on the chance to advertise their movies via recap YouTube channels.
Two sides of the same coin
However, some culture critics say that such summary videos do not always bring benefits to the local content industry.
Well-known culture critic Lee Dong-jin told YouTuber ChimChakman, also known as ex-webtoon creator Lee Mal-nyeon, in an interview that “recap videos can be useful but it is not the same as watching a movie.”
He went on to criticize those who watch recap videos to satisfy their intellectual vanity.
“I hope that those people do not fool themselves into believing that they have actually watched the film. What is worse is that some people even evaluate a movie based on a recap video. I won’t say that recap clips are useless, but they are not the same as watching the movies,” he said.
Culture critic Jung agreed.
“It simply tells you which protagonist did what and what were the results. So, it is hard to say you appreciated the film properly. It can lead the viewers to think they have watched the film but I would not say that it is a proper way to consume works of art,” Jung told The Korea Herald.