Vietnam completely shuts down for the week of lunar New Year (we usually call it Chinese new year, the Vietnamese call it “Tet”). Everyone gets the week off to go visit their families. All shops close, all commerce stops, the streets are empty. So a friend and I went on a quick trip over to Thailand.

At some point we visited a small city called Chanthaburi in Eastern Thailand near the Cambodian Border. The city is famous for gem trading. The streets are lined with gem shops and are normally filled people haggling and looking through magnifying glasses, except during lunar New Year. Here again, most stuff was closed. Which suited me fine, I was just happy to be away from the noise and chaos of Hanoi.

So what was everybody in Chanthaburi doing instead of trading gems? They were at the local festival, sticking gold stickers on monk statues and watching matches of my new favorite obscure Thai sport: Sepak Takraw.

The game  is basically volleyball, except you can only use your feet, and half the time you’re doing crazy back flips.

So far the story all makes sense right?

Well, except for one thing. All their jerseys have big AIG logos on the front.

AIG, or the American International Group, is a huge American corporate insurance company that also deals in financial services, telecommunications, ports, and aircraft leasing. They’ve been in the news a lot in the last few years over a big fraud scandal in 2005, and as one of the major financial bailouts last summer.

It’s not uncommon to see international brands in developing countries. Coca Cola and Pepsi have managed to get their logo absolutely everywhere. It seems like they must do this by subsidizing or fully sponsoring the manufacture of signs for restaurants and shops, and including free signs and placards with their deliveries. This would be pretty easy for them as Coca Cola and Pepsi have vast networks local bottling and distributing companies that they work with.

And it makes sense that Coca Cola and Pepsi want to build an international brand, especially in emerging markets.

But did a bunch of local Sepak Takraw players in an obscure Thai city end up with AIG logos on their custom team jerseys? I can only imagine two possible explanations:

One explanation is that AIG actually had such a large scale and long term global strategy that they thought it was important to really really get their brand out there into every corner of the earth. I doubt anybody at this local Thai lunar New Year festival had any business purchasing insurance or renting jumbo jets from giant American corporations.

The other explanation is that maybe AIG has been sponsoring major sports teams internationally, as many big global corporations do, and that the local business that prints up the jerseys for the Sepak Takraw teams figured they wouldn’t look legit unless they had some corporate logo action going on – in which case AIG is getting free advertising.

I wish I had thought to ask them about it. Either way it’s pretty silly.

Followup1:  Googling “Sepak Takraw AIG” came up with a bunch of references to AIG: the Asian Indoor Games, which is the big annual tournament for Sepak Takraw. I guess that this suggests a variation on the second theory: the AIG logo was borrowed because their stupid three letter acronym (TLA) has a separate special meaning in this context. Ha!

Followup2: Upon re-reading my post I realize it sounds somewhat condescending and ethnocentric: “These naïve villagers couldn’t possibly understand the meaning of this American brand, how quaint, har har har!”. I should explain that the copying and misuse of brands  is everywhere here and you can’t help but wonder about the stories behind it sometimes. Yesterday I got a ride from someone who’s motorbike seat said Dolce and Gabana all over it. Thailand is a major business center and I’m sure lots of people know what AIG is, but there’s still something a little off about the AIG brand showing up on sepak takraw jerseys.