The man who never looked back

Ask Anuwat Wichiennarat what’s most important to him in life and he doesn’t hesitate for a second before replying “music”. 
“It’s a dream, a passion and a love,” says the 36-year-old chief executive of concert organiser 4Nologue, who has achieved astronomical success in the past few years. 
“That’s all based on music. I used music to make me feel happy and to improve the situation of my family, who were far from rich." 

Now a high-earner, Anuwat formerly launched the new headquarters of 4Nologue in February, bringing in a veritable army of Thai and international stars to the grand opening, among them Got7, one of South Korea’s most popular boy bands. He has invested Bt200 million in the new building, which also houses rehearsal rooms and recording studio to facilitate artist management. It is from here that he will implement his Bt300-million mega project “5-7-9”, which gets its name from boy band SBFive, Got7, and 9x9, a newly formed boy band with nine members.
“I’m grateful to all our strong business partners for their continuous support. I’m doing what I believe in and I’m honest,” says Anuwat, who is now developing his company into a content provider.

“The future of 4Nologue lies in exporting our content like South Korea does. For a long time, it’s been bringing its artists to the world with enormous success. We are ready to be a leader and also a role model.”
It hasn’t always been easy for Anuwat. Born into a modest fruit-growing family in Nakhon Pathom, the middle of three children, he started listening to music on the radio as a young child and says it was his only escape from the tedium of everyday life. 
“I never thought about turning my passion for music into a career. All I knew was that I only felt happy when I was listening to music. I discovered that music actually could be a career when I was in high school. I asked a teacher counsellor what I should study at university to follow that career and the answer was communication arts. But my parents disagreed, telling me I should work in the civil service or for a company so I could have stability in life. I hated mathematics so I selected English as my major at Bangkok University, because I thought it would give me a wider choice of fields and occupations,” Anuwat recalls.

It was during his second year at university that Anuwat saw a way of following his dream of being a disc jockey. He pleaded with Jiaranai Oprasert, then a producer of a radio wave at GMM Grammy subsidiary A-Time to take him on as an apprentice. Jiaranai agreed and Anuwat learnt everything from the process of recording a jingle and radio spot to programme coordination. His hard work paid off and in just two months, he was rewarded with a job as a programme coordinator.
“It was very difficult for me at that time as I was working from dusk to dawn and dragging myself into the classroom before noon,” says Anuwat, who took out loans to pay for his university education and paid them back after graduation. 
Anuwat soon found out that he didn’t really want to be a DJ but a producer. After graduation, he decided he would ask MCOT to take him on as manager of a radio station.
“My ego was just too big, fuelled by graduating with better results than other students because of my working experience. As a new grad, I presented my proposal for managing a radio wave to Mingkwan Sangsuwan, who was the president of MCOT at that time. It was crazy. Understandably he rejected me, but he also give me some good advice. He said, ‘You are only a creative not a marketing executive. You presentation is good but it lacks reality.’ That was my turning point,” says Anuwat.

Several months later, he applied for and landed a marketing job at Channel [V] and proceeded to learn everything he could – from sales to events, music awards, artist management and customer contact as well as live shows. He also came to know South Korea’s artists and organised the first large-scale concert by TVXQ at Impact Arena in front of an audience of 14,000. 
“I was just as passionate about music. Every time I listened to an English song, I could understand what it meant. YouTube had yet to be invented so I watched concerts on VCD. When I went to concerts, I studied how and why the movements of stages, lighting, sound system, and backdrops were synchronised with songs. I learnt the entire production process, the functions of stage equipment, and the lighting and sound system.”

Now 24, Anuwat revised his dream of programme producer and set his sights of becoming a music event organiser or a concert promoter. 
He joined with three friends to set up 4Nologue – a name borrowed from the word monologue – and the company started its business by offering the most popular Korean boy band, TVXQ as product presenter for a Japanese firm.
“It was very tough,” recalls Anuwat with a smile. “I was flying to South Korea four times a month together a translator to present my profile, my reliability and my proposal. Moreover, I conducted research into the product’s marketing statistics. The customer complained: ‘You know that our product is Japanese? So why you are presenting a Korean artist to us?’ But I could see the product had to follow the K-pop fever. As it turned out, TVXQ was the first Korean presenter for a product out of their home country.

“While dealing with the Korean boy band’s label, I was given two rulebooks: ‘Artist Rider’ for the presenter and ‘Technical Rider’ for a concert performer. At first, I hated them, because they were so difficult. But everything went smoothly in the end. At first, the Korean artists wouldn’t try any Thai food except for phad thai. They were suspicious of spices and wouldn’t touch tom yam goong. Four years later, they had fallen in love with Thai food and since then, they’ve been demanding a range of dishes including koong thod sauce makham’ (fried shrimp with tamarind sauce), phad phakboong’ (fried morning glory) and kaeng som chaom khai’ (sour curry with vegetable omelette),” he grins.