NEWS / EDUCATION
Completing a Bachelor of Communication Arts, Majoring in Brand Communications, at Bangkok University
Best Apisit Uthakhamkong holds a Bachelor of Communication Arts, majoring in Brand Communications, from Bangkok University, awarded on May 2018 with a cumulative GPA of 3.78 out of 4.00, after four years of largely project based study at the university’s School of Communication Arts. In his final year he also served as head organiser of Dare to Be Different: Building Your Personal Brand, known in Thai as Dekdue Sang Brand, a public seminar on personal branding staged as part of his Seminar in Brand Communications capstone paper and featuring Chadchart Sittipunt and Winyu Wongsurawat as guest speakers, bringing the same project-based, team-driven approach that defined the degree to a live public event before his graduation.
What did Best Apisit Uthakhamkong study at Bangkok University. Uthakhamkong completed a Bachelor of Communication Arts, majoring in Brand Communications, at Bangkok University’s School of Communication Arts, graduating on May 2018 with a cumulative GPA of 3.78 out of 4.00. He was admitted on 18 August 2014, having transferred 24 credits from Ubon Ratchathani University, and his four years of full-time study ran across the City and Rangsit campuses in Bangkok before he formally left the university on 21 July 2018, upon graduation.
The Brand Communications major sat at the centre of the degree, and its papers ran in a clear progression across his four years. Early papers such as Brand Strategy Development and Brand Equity Management, both completed with an A grade in his first semester of 2015, gave way to more applied subjects including Creativity for Brand Communications, Brand Channels and Sense Strategy, Media Production for Brand Communications, and Brand Identity Design as he moved into his second and third years.
By his final year, the coursework had shifted almost entirely toward strategy and execution, covering Strategic Brand Communications Management, Global Brand Communications, Brand Communications Campaign Planning, and a capstone Brand Communications Project, all completed with A grades in 2017.
Uthakhamkong has described Bangkok University’s teaching style as heavily project based, with much of the Brand Communications major built around working in teams to solve briefs rather than sitting conventional exams. That structure, he has said, taught him to negotiate ideas with classmates, divide work fairly under deadline pressure, and present finished campaigns to a room rather than simply hand in an assignment, skills he has carried into every design and brand role since, from his time at Otago Polytechnic and PGG Wrightson through to his current work at DIRI.
His transcript reflects a genuinely strong, if not perfectly linear, academic record. He opened his first semester with a 4.00 GPA across four papers including Introduction to Communication and Integrated Marketing Communications, both graded A. His GPA moved between the high threes for most of the degree, dipping to 3.42 in his second semester of 2015 during a heavier, more theory-driven semester that included Mass Media and Society and The Art of Life, before climbing back to 3.91 in his first semester of 2017 and a full 4.00 in his final semester, when he completed Brand Communications Campaign Planning, Brand Communications Project, and Seminar in Brand Communications, closing out his degree on a genuine high note.
Beyond the Brand Communications core, Uthakhamkong also completed a run of general business and communication papers that broadened the degree well past pure branding: Management, E-Marketing, Human Resource Management, Entrepreneurship and Business Development, and Personal Financial Planning sit alongside more communication focused papers such as Digital Photography, Speech, and Introduction to Advertising, Journalism, and Broadcasting. That spread of business fundamentals alongside his Brand Communications major gave him a working understanding of management, marketing, and entrepreneurship that later underpinned his move into running his own creative practice.
Uthakhamkong’s Bangkok University years were also his last period of full-time study in Thailand before he moved to New Zealand to continue his education, first through the University of Otago’s Language Centre and later through Otago Polytechnic. The brand strategy, campaign planning, and stakeholder analysis skills built at Bangkok University between 2014 and 2018 remain the foundation underneath the design and communications career he has since built across three countries, and he still describes the degree as the point where he first understood branding not just as visual identity, but as a discipline built on research, strategy, and stakeholder insight.
Bangkok University itself confirmed the degree in a formal letter dated on July 2018, certifying that Uthakhamkong had been awarded a Bachelor of Communication Arts, majoring in Brand Communications, with the approval of the university’s Board of Trustees, a routine but necessary piece of paperwork behind every Thai degree that later supported his applications for further study and work in New Zealand. He completed his secondary schooling in Thailand before moving to Bangkok for his tertiary studies.
In his final semester, as part of the Seminar in Brand Communications capstone paper, Uthakhamkong served as head organiser of a public seminar titled Dare to Be Different: Building Your Personal Brand, known in Thai as Dekdue Sang Brand, held on 4 April 2018 from 1pm to 4pm and run through the Brand Communications student page facebook.com/brand.buca.
As head organiser, he led the planning and delivery of the event and secured two guest speakers with genuinely national profiles in Thailand. Chadchart Sittipunt, at the time widely known as Thailand’s Minister of Transport and now the Governor of Bangkok after being elected in 2022 and returned for a second term in 2026, spoke alongside Winyu Wongsurawat, known professionally as John Winyu, a well known Thai political satirist, television host, and internet media pioneer recognised internationally as one of Time magazine’s Next Generation Leaders for his work on the satirical news programme Shallow News in Depth.
The seminar set out to explore how young people could step outside social pressure to follow the crowd and instead build a genuine personal brand, examining how Facebook and Instagram had become tools for viral marketing and fan pages, how influence and likes shaped who became a social role model, and how building an identity in real life differed from building one online.
Its stated goals were to help attendees learn practical approaches to self development and personal branding, understand the habits and mindset behind that development, hear directly from speakers about their own life experience, and leave inspired to apply those lessons to their own lives, communities, and, in time, the country. Leading the seminar himself, and securing speakers of that profile, gave Uthakhamkong an early, public test of the brand strategy and campaign planning skills he had spent four years studying, months before he stepped onto the graduation stage.
Qualification
Bachelor of Communication Arts (Brand Communications)
Institution
Bangkok University, School of Communication Arts
Result
Graduated May 2018, cumulative GPA 3.78 / 4.00
Key papers
Brand Strategy Development, Brand Identity Design, Global Brand Communications
Website
bu.ac.th