A copy of my company's historic CD ROM
My First Experience of the Value of Differentiation
By Jeffrey Baumgartner
In 1992, I set up JPB Creative Co, Ltd, a small marketing communications company set up in Bangkok and the first business I founded. Our speciality was to produce promotional material in English, mostly for Thai companies selling internationally. In 1994, I discovered the Internet and soon began exploring business opportunities with this exciting new medium. A year later, I sat down and had a talk with myself. JPB could either continue being another small marketing communications company in a city with many such companies, or it could change its focus and become one of the country's first Internet and multimedia production companies. The latter choice would mean leaving a massive market and entering an unknown one. There may have been a lot of marketing communications companies, advertising agencies and PR companies in the city, but in Bangkok's growing economy, there was also a lot of demand. The Internet, on the other hand, was an unknown.
I took a chance. I taught myself and one of my designers to do HTML and we spent time looking at web sites, debating what was effective and what was not and looking at the code to see how impressive web sites were designed. Remember, this was early in the history of the world wide web.
My choice provide a wise one. The Internet rapidly took off in popularity and with few companies able to design web sites, we got business and attention. The press soon discovered I knew a thing or three about the Internet and the web and I was regularly contacted for interviews as well as to provide opinions on the latest development. It helped that I was fluent in Thai, so could communicate in the reporters' own language. Needless-to-say, this was all good for my business, my reputation and my company's reputation.
In 1996, I decided to branch out into multimedia, another new technology, and my team produced the 1997 Car Encyclopedia − the first original, Thai language entertainment CD-ROM. This again made the news, caught the attention of the press and our little company (eight people and a couple of cats) was featured on a prime time technology television programme. All of which further boosted our reputation.
Had I stayed in marketing communications, I probably would have got by just fine. But I doubt I would have made it big. By taking a chance, differentiating my little company and embracing our new identity, our company prospered, I gained fame (which even helped me leave Thailand a couple years later when I decided it was time to go) and my employees of the time learned valuable skills that helped them prosper.
Erps-Kwerps, Belgium
August 2016
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