Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-related advertising is on the rise as companies look to capitalize on consumer concern over the disease, industry sources said yesterday.
"With SARS rampant around the nation, more and more products are linked directly or indirectly to fighting SARS," an account executive of Dentsu (Tai-wan) Inc (
The total volume of ads, however, did not significantly increase because of SARS related advertisements, said the executive, who asked to remain anonymous.
"They were afraid of appearing to be profiteering from SARS, but I believe SARS has created considerable profits for some of these companies," she said.
Newspapers and TV ads are plugging products to combat the disease, including vitamins, air purifiers, health food and hand-washing products.
Lu Chia-yu (
The advertising department of the Chinese-language Liberty Times, however, said SARS-related product ads have recently increased by 20 percent. The Taipei Times is part of the Liberty Times Group.
ING Antai Life Insurance Co (安泰人壽) has run ads recently that encourage a traditional Chinese greeting of clasping one hand over the other to avoid shaking other people's hands. The company says it ran the ad to promote awareness of public hygiene and that it cost 15 to 20 percent of its annual advertising budget.
"Our business didn't grow due to the fear of SARS," said Ingrid Chen (
"Some of our customers have extended their insurance coverage for potential SARS contamination, but the travel insurance business is dropping due to fewer and fewer people going abroad," she said.
Meanwhile, Consumers' Foundation (
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
PROJECTION: TSMC said it expects strong growth this year, with revenue in US dollars projected to grow by about 30 percent, outperforming the industry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported consolidated sales last month reached NT$317.66 billion (US$9.98 billion), the highest ever for the month of February, driven by robust demand for chips built using the company’s advanced 3-nanometer (3nm) process. Last month’s figure was up 22.2 percent from a year earlier, but fell 20.8 percent from January, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. For the first two months of the year, TSMC posted cumulative sales of NT$718.91 billion, up 29.9 percent from a year earlier. Analysts attributed the growth to sustained global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products
RSS