Thai mobile company True Move H has posted a three-minute video advertisement on the importance of giving, which is making quite a stir on the internet. Within a day of posting the film, it had racked up one million views on YouTube. As of the time of writing that number has climbed to more than 6.8 million.
The short begins with a young boy being caught shoplifting medicine for his sick mother. After a vendor slaps him around and shames him in the street, a neighboring merchant steps in to pay for the medicine and gives him a bag of vegetable soup to take home to his mom.
The film then skips ahead 30 years and we see the same generous shop owner becoming suddenly ill at work. In the next scene he is lying in a hospital bed wearing an oxygen mask. The daughter receives the medical bill of 792,000 baht (about $25,000). She is forced to sell their home to cover the costs.
However, the daughter wakes up beside her father’s bedside only to find that the bill has mysteriously been paid. Along with the receipt showing the balance has been paid in full, a note has been left for her. “All expenses paid 30 years ago,” it reads, “with three packs of painkillers and a bag of veggie soup.”
As is apparent by this point, the same boy who once stole the medicine for his ailing mother has grown up to become the same man’s doctor. The video then reveals a series of flashbacks – in slow motion – as the doctor recalls the childhood incident and the realization dawns on him that his patient is indeed the man who once helped him in a time of need.
The advert ends by striking a resonant chord with a maxim: “Giving is the best communication.”
TRUE is a Thai communication conglomerate. Alongside the nation’s third largest mobile provider, True Move H, the group controls True Visions, the kingdom’s largest cable television provider, and the nation’s largest internet service provider, True Internet.