Taiwan Today

A three-minute firework extravaganza that poured down from the Taipei 101 skyscraper greeted the arrival of 2007 in Taipei. This was witnessed by around 500,000 local residents who packed the city's downtown streets. It was also included on television schedules around the world, perhaps because, at 1,667 feet, Taipei 101 is still the world's tallest building. This would have delighted executives of Japan's Sony Corp., which paid around US$920,000 to sponsor the firework display. For this, the electronics giant got to display the names of the company and its hottest product during and after the event. This was the second time in the skyscraper's three-year history that Sony won the contract for the New Year firework display, although it was preceded by several months of intense negotiation among prospective sponsors. These included both domestic and international businesses, said Shieh Wen, corporate public affairs manager of the skyscraper operator Taipei Financial Center Corp., Jan. 3, and ranged from automobile manufacturers and telecommunications companies, to a joint bid by four leading domestic brands: Acer, Asus, BenQ and Giant. The final contract-winning display was one minute longer than last year and included 10,000 fireworks, almost 25 percent more than on Jan. 1, 2006. TFCC selected the sponsor based on the company's brand image and originality of marketing, said Shieh. Sony told TVBS-news that the company bid to sponsor the display in light of the large commercial impact it could generate. It added that the product it advertised last year, a liquid-crystal display television, had become its top-selling product in terms of both revenue and volume since being launched on the Taiwan market. Shieh also boasted of the advertising effect of Taipei 101's display being broadcast on international media including CNN and EuroNews. Furthermore, he claimed that last year Web users also transmitted the firework display via the Internet, and that more than 100 million e-mails containing the skyscraper's image were delivered or forwarded in the first half of 2006. The TFCC also licensed Sony to reproduce images of the event in calendars, catalogs, TV commercials and magazine advertisements. Firework-related advertising could bring in more than US$3 million to the sponsor, according to a Dec. 28, 2006 report in the Chinese-language Economic Daily News.