BANGKOK – In a shocking revelation that has rocked the F&B advertising and marketing world, the mystery of Bangkok’s ridiculously-monikered wine establishments has been conclusively shown to be the work of a single, horrible English-language copywriter.
NTN investigations have proven that Dmitri Kafelnic, a Romanian-born British citizen, is the creative mind behind the dozens of grammatical and stylistic atrocities that pass for wine bar names throughout the city.
According to Thailand Immigration Department documents, Kafelnic entered the kingdom in 2004 on a tourist visa, and was living at the Peachy Guest House on Phra Athit Road. After being hired and subsequently fired as an English teacher by several small bilingual schools in the Banglampoo area, Kafelnic registered himself as a privately-held corporation called “DK Consulting” in 2006 and began soliciting copywriting work by calling Thai greeting-card companies whose products had grammatically poor English writing on them.
It was while working for a small coffee shop on Ekkamai road, editing menus and promotional flyers for owner Duanglern “Dan” Jittiporn, that Kafelnic met the owner’s sister Pop, who was planning on creating a “new concept” wine bar based on what she had seen on her travels. Kafelnic was hired to come up with the name under the brief of “clever and trendy.”
The result, Wine O’Clock on soi 49, was the beginning of a trend that would soon be a blight on Bangkok’s reputation as a sophisticated, cosmopolitan city.
Despite being mocked for its ridiculous name in magazine reviews and on blogs, Wine O’Clock introduced Kafelnic, who has no known experience in marketing, advertising, or any relevant education in communications, to the sub-culture of Bangkok hi-so kids who open copycat businesses using their parents’ money. Through his social interactions with Wine O’Clock’s owners’ friends, Kafelnic was cluelessly hired by several other wine-bar proprietors to help them come up with “cool and clever” names.
Revenue Department tax documents obtained by NTN connect Kafelnic to payments made to the owners of “X Wine Z,” “Wine We Well,” “Wine I Love You,” “Wine Me Up” and at least 10 other of the most stupidly-named bars in Bangkok.
“It’s really a startling case of people assuming that something was right because everyone else was doing it,” said Monica West, CEO of McCann Erickson Thailand. “That none of these wine bar owners would even bother to check with a native speaker as to the quality of the name is incredible, but not entirely surprising.”
Kafelnic’s string of successful hires was even more amazing considering he is not actually a native English speaker. Born in Constanta, Romania, he did not emigrate to Manchester until the age of 14, suggesting that his English skills were no better, and possibly worse, than the Thai clients for whom he was working.
“Kafelnic’s ability to pass himself off as an English speaker, much less a copywriter, is either a testament to his charisma or an indictment of how clueless the average Thai wine bar owner is,” said Clinton Vorheas, the creative director of JWT Thailand. “Either way it shows that we have a long way to go.”
Kafelnic’s crowning achievement was arguably his 2011 naming of Any Winehouse, the newest wine bar on soi 49 which opened directly across from the former locale of Wine O’Clock. The tasteless, creepy, bad-pun name immediately became such an object of scorn and mockery that it actually attracted customers who didn’t even like wine but who wanted to Instagram themselves from somewhere with such a comical label.
“You could argue that with Any Winehouse, Kafelnic actually achieved a kind of savant success,” said West. “A name that was so bad, I mean impossibly bad, that it actually drew in crowds. And in pure marketing terms, that’s undeniably good.”
Dmitri Kafelnic declined to be interviewed for this story, but confirmed in an email correspondence that he was in fact the creative mind behind all of Bangkok’s oddly named wine bars, and that he was proud of his work.
“I write for your restaurant or whatever its beautiful name ok,” he wrote. “I am Canada so I can make like American or whatnot you want sound like. Call me or by fax or Facebook. I write creative special any day.”
