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Published on December 12, 2007

Her climb up the career ladder at Citibank Thailand had been rapid. In only five years, she became an assistant manager to the vice president, overseeing global-transaction services and corporate banking. The rewards in that position were very attractive and tended to persuade her against a change.

However, she finally decided to join the media industry, because she wanted to spend more time with her two children. And once the decision was made, she found herself wondering why she had not made the move a lot earlier.

Today, as vice president of Media Transasia, Rasina, 39, oversees company operations in Thailand, India and Hong Kong. She was responsible for negotiating the licence to publish US teenage magazine Seventeen in Thailand.

"The person who convinced me [to move from Citibank] was the president of Media Transasia [who has no family ties] and not my father. After he knew I would finally come, he told me simply to do whatever needed to be done. He had run the business for 20 years, establishing it in three countries. He had already got what he wanted, and he wanted to stop," Rasina says.

"There's no stress every Sunday night before I start work every Monday morning, like when I was working at Citibank. I'm always excited about meeting my colleagues at the beginning of the workweek, in order to share what we've seen over the weekend. And I always have the opportunity to meet a hundred people each day, from colleagues in my office to people at parties - which are arranged almost every night - and exchange ideas with them. The people I meet come from various backgrounds and are very creative," she says.

Working as a publisher gives her flexible working hours. She can work from anywhere, inside or outside her office, unlike people in the banking industry, who must remain in their offices all day. The work environment introduces flexibility to her thinking.

As a publisher, she is constantly analysing readers: who are her targeted readers? What will they gain from reading her company's magazines? How will the magazines change their lives? Among her ideals is one hypothetical situation: "A reader brings our magazine to a certain shop and opens it to a page that has the items he or she wants. Then the reader tells the shopkeeper to bring them exactly that same stuff. This shows that the reader really believes in us."

Although she is happy to be out of the stressful and much less flexible world of banking, Rasina says that industry did teach her some useful strategies that she employs in her media work.

The first is the creation of presentations that easily allow listeners to visualise what she is talking about. She goes as far as to claim that she is the first in the media business to apply this strategy.

"I used it to show the owners of Seventeen the market potential in Thailand, the character of Thai teenagers and how the magazine would suit teenage Thai readers," she says, recalling the time she flew to the US seeking the licence to publish the magazine in Thailand.

She says they completely agreed with her, because she was talking about Thai teenagers being people aged 17-21. She explained to them that US teenagers were very similar in character but five years more advanced than Thai teenagers, so the US readership was younger than that here, and by the time US teenagers reached 17-21, they had already passed through all of the behavioural situations of Thai teenagers.

Moreover, she pointed out in her presentation that Thai teenagers had never been affected by an economic crisis. This is something she noticed in the 1997 crash, when teenagers still got money from their parents and kept on spending as usual.

"Convincing the owners of international licences is not difficult at all," she says. "We simply must be good at setting out our plans."

The second useful work strategy she gained from Citibank is "consultative selling", which can be applied when persuading potential advertisers to buy ad space.

Rasina explains that consultative selling is a means of analysing what kind of business certain companies are doing, who their targeted groups are and how they can reach those groups. In proposals to potential advertisers, Media Transasia can suggest strategies by which targeted groups can be reached.

While proposing deals to potential advertisers is not always successful, Rasina has never felt discouraged.

"I always like to think positively. Of course, I cannot win their hearts every time, but at least I learn from them and exchange ideas with them every time," she says.

Media Transasia publishes 24 magazines in Thailand, India and Hong Kong. These include its own magazines; its licensed publications, such as Seventeen and OK!; and others that are distributed for corporate customers, including Wow Fitness, Elite Power Choice and Q House.

Since she has been working for Media Transasia, Rasina has launched the local publication of two licensed magazines: Seventeen and OK! She says there are two main steps to starting any new magazine: conducting "book shelf" surveys; and arranging focus groups. If there seems to be enough potential readers, the next step is to conduct feasibility studies and examine the possibilities in depth.

Once the magazine is launched, creating loyalty is the next big job.

"Magazines need to build loyalty and provide readers with the promise of what they have grown to expect from a brand, issue after issue, plus more. They need to be informative, interactive, useful, involving, entertaining and engaging, and they also need to enrich a readers' life subtly without being didactic or preachy," she says.

"To stay on top, magazines must constantly be with their readers, in the readers' environment, so they understand readers' needs and are able to predict what they'll want tomorrow. Creating this 'glove' for a reader creates loyalty. It's all about engaging a reader - building an interactive website; mobile interaction. The brand must be available wherever the reader reaches out for it."

Asked whether she thought Thai magazines could attract the attention of the global magazine market and follow in the footsteps of many US and Japanese publications, she responds that in terms of content - particularly fashion content - Thai magazines qualify.

"Thai fashion designers are in the forefront compared with many other Asian countries, which I really appreciate. Some of them have also successfully introduced a Thai style of designing into the world's renowned fashion cities, such as New York and Paris."

However, Rasina believes not many Thai magazines will "go global" within the next decade, because of their business operations. She says many magazines here are still operated by owners who preferred to do every job from beginning to end. In the US, big magazine publishers hire editors who are specialists in specific fields to produce the publications. This allows company managers time to concentrate on managing the business and fostering connections around the world.

Nevertheless, she has witnessed the constant development of the magazine industry in Thailand, with the launch of about 40 periodicals (not including those she may have missed), an increase in readership and the formation of a magazine association, giving people in the business an opportunity to discuss their industry.

"The magazine market in Thailand is still very immature. We still have high opportunities and a lot of room for further development," she says.

The current economic downturn, which has affected some magazines, has not created difficulties for Rasina.

"We should not stay sad about what is happening, but rather always look to the future and make our magazines and ourselves better," she says.

 Nitida Asawanipont

 The Nation