A classic case study has emerged once again recently.

Rawit Hanutsaha, owner of the Srichand brand, gave an interview saying, "Consumers today believe blogger reviews less, and instead prefer to read or trust reviews from pure users—real users—because bloggers have become advertising." This resembles an earlier time when consumers began to trust brand-made commercials less.

The media headlines on this were quite strong, along the lines of: "The era of bloggers is over; consumers no longer believe them."

Personally, I sympathize with Rawit very much, because many bloggers became angry—not only beauty bloggers, but bloggers from other fields as well. The feeling was something like: 'Once the rice field is done, the ox is killed; once the war is over, the general is slain. In the past you came asking bloggers to review your products, and now that the brand is famous, you throw bloggers away.' One group of bloggers even invited others to throw away Srichand powder.

Rawit had to come out and clarify his intentions, insisting that he had "never insulted bloggers, but that what he meant in speaking to the media that day was the change in consumer behavior toward receiving product information."

"All media must adapt to what consumers want."

In truth, what Rawit said was not a lie. It is something that is happening both in Thailand and abroad. Overall, bloggers have become less credible, partly because many of them accept too much advertising work, or because brands themselves force bloggers to write or say certain things.

When this goes on for too long, readers and viewers begin to see through it. Bloggers then become merely information providers rather than influencers who affect purchasing decisions as they once did.

If bloggers are this angry at Rawit, then perhaps they should also be angry with fellow bloggers, because it is their own profession that has contributed to this situation.

The interesting point Rawit raised is the change in the way consumers receive information. This has evolved continuously since the beginning of advertising itself, dating back to the industrial or factory era, when market demand exceeded production capacity.

Therefore, in the earliest era of advertising, nothing was very complicated. All you needed to do was make people aware that the product existed as much as possible, and it would sell well—for example, a cream that made your face white and beautiful, stockings that made your legs smooth, or a drink that made you feel refreshed. Sometimes just printing a leaflet was enough to make people want to go buy.

Later, when manufacturers began producing more products, product distinctiveness started to disappear. Advertising became more difficult, because if everyone advertised in the same way, all products looked alike and consumers lost interest.

The next era of advertising therefore focused on the "Unique Selling Point"—finding a specific selling point for the product, such as a whitening cream that works within 7 days, a natural whitening cream that does not cause allergies, or a whitening cream that makes blemishes disappear.

After that, as advertising competition intensified to the point that brands could no longer find unique selling points because everything overlapped, the industry moved into the era of emotional advertising, emphasizing feelings, emotions, and brand associations instead.

Then came the digital era, in which everyone can access product information at their fingertips. Consumers also have many alternative media choices, so they pay attention only to what they truly care about. Traditional branding methods—especially one-way advertising—have therefore become much less effective.

At that moment, "bloggers" became a type of media that suited a certain group of people because bloggers felt real and represented fellow consumers. They did not feel like "advertising" but like the opinions of experts who were consumers just like us.

The interesting question is: in the end, how will consumers respond to media? Will media still influence them? Is advertising still necessary? Or should we simply make the best and most sincere products possible, and then let consumers speak for us as the advertising?

We will have to keep watching to see where the destination ultimately lies.