Back when

Picked up a new song over the weekend, Aqua's "Back to the 80's". It reminded me of Sandwich's "Betamax".


When M&M was just a snack 

And Michael Jackson's skin was black...

Back to Rocky and Cherry Coke, yeah...

Too many men with heavy makeup on / Too many poodles with guitars 

Thanks for all the joy you've given us / You will always be our superstars...

Hooray for Cosby and Rubik's cube 

Hooray for Dynasty and moon boots

Hooray for Devo and barber curls

Hooray for Poltergeist and Barbie girls

Let's go back to the 80s

Wala pa nung myx wala pa nung MTV

Wala pa nung internet

Wala pa nung ipod at mp3

Wala pa nung cable

Wala pa nung cellphone

Wala pa ring cd or dvd

Meron lang betamax

Nagreklamo si Chikoy Pura

Sa balita ng Asin

Ang anak ni ka Freddie

Kinontra ni Edu Abraham

Dumibidoo ang Apo Hiking

Mga kababayan ni Francis M

Beh buti nga sa Hotdog

Nosibalasi Sampaguita

Sa jingle magazine

Natutong mag gitara

Sinifra ang mga kanta

Sa cassettte at plaka

Does the immediacy of the net generation have us longing for the good old analog days?

Not necessarily, as Sandwich sums up, "ipagpatuloy ang daloy ng alon" ( my terrible translation is... "it's the continuous flow of the waves").

Boomerang winners in the hot seat

For the last session of the Summit, Boomerang winners presented their award-winning work then sat down all together for a panel discussion.

Just my take on things but it was easier to understand why some campaigns were winners vs the others...

{Like}

Gold Winner for Online:

Nescafe Palistuhan

Proximity

Mentioned Support: Rich Ads, Non-rich Ads, Skinner, Search, TV

To bring to life the product benefit of a new Nescafe RTD product, communication asked Listo ka ba? (Are you alert?). Treatment was rap / hip-hop. Viral videos showed Ramon Bautista getting rapper-ready. The campaign microsite allowed users to get their rapper names and take a quiz that tested their wits.

I got to try the quiz, which didn't ask the usual trivia, but instead posed questions like "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" Well users had to get a hundred of those right in order to be eligible for a prize! Points for engagement!

I thought this was a great campaign. Big Idea was solid, campaign was supported both online and off, and the website had content for various levels of engagement.

Gold Winner for Innovation:

Awesome Philippines

Media Contacts

Mentioned Support: TV, banners, digital PR

Posed with the challenge of promoting "Awesome Philippines" across eleven markets in four contintents without the budget to do actual on-ground at each place, Media Contacts came up with an innovative solution - meet everybody in Second Life. And where else but the 7,108th Philippine island?

Sec. Ace Durano held a press conference on the island, which also allowed visitors to try classic Pinoy activites like beach hoppings and see local landmarks such as the Chocolate Hills.

They also launched TV spots and banner ads featuring Apl.de.Ap, Happy Slip and MTV VJs doing trippy stuff. They called users to search "Awesome Experience" to find out where they were. This I believe led them to the DOT site, where they discovered even more cool stuff they could do in the Philippines, and "Remix Your Vacation" - plan their own itinerary and trip.

Ed Mapa, Jr. was asked via SMS during the panel discussion how many conversions actually came out of the campaign. He clarified that the metrics set by the DOT were not actual conversion to visit, but to drive buzz and conversation which they were very successful at.

I thought that this was really cool! Kudos on integration with ATL, SEO to utilize search as call-to-action, social engineering for the reveal and real innovation via Second Life press launch.

{Did not understand}

Gold Winner for Mobile:

Quaker Oats Eat Well Promo

Proximity

To increase sales for Quaker Oats (which are good for your heart), users were given the chance to win gadgets and even a car if they purchased the product and then joined an SMS raffle.

I felt that this did not impress. What is different about a raffle? It seems like all of the big brands have done some type of SMS raffle.

In the interview after the panel, Leah Besa-Jimenez mentioned that they were discussing heart health even prior to the raffle... which unfortunately was not mentioned in any of the materials shown to the audience. Would have liked to hear more about that instead of a promo since winning a car doesn't seem related to any big idea or even the product benefit.

From the materials shown, I actually thought that the Silver winner, Pampers Hearts Club (also by Proximity), did a better job of engaging consumers.

Gold Winner for Integrated Marketing:

Sandbox

Tribal DDB

When Sandbox was announced as the winner, I thought that they won on the basis of being the first "web-to-wap" portal. I agree that is pretty integrated.

But when they showed the AVP with the marketing for the site, it didn't seem very different - online videos, banner ads, skinners, e-mail blasts and iCafe screensavers. They didn't even do any mobile marketing despite Sandbox being on WAP.

The most creative item would be the viral videos starring Ramon Bautista, which the Tribal speaker said that Ramon actually wrote himself. I find this odd but when I search "Ramon Bautista Sandbox" on Google, the only result is a video on Metacafe, which only has 118 views. Also, searching for the same on YouTube renders no results for Sandbox (but includes some of the Listo vids!). Is this viral?

Lastly, I seem to recall several TVCs and print ads which may have contributed a lot to the number of people that signed up.

Maybe my beef is more that Sandbox doesn't really have a lot of content besides the games, ringtones, etc, that people are going to have to pay for before getting to use.

I don't know, I could be wrong. Anyway that's why the top of this section is titled "I don't understand".

{Anyway...}

An interesting point that came up in the panel discussion: Digital is not necessarily cheap.

I think the confusion comes from the fact that the distribution network is actually for free. I mean, how much did the inmates in Cebu spend on going viral? Probably not much. But that assumes that whatever, X, will actually spread on its own. It costs money to spread the word, especially vs other brands spreading their own word and most especially vs consumers spreading the words that they and others actually care about.

Besides that, producing digital content is so much harder than a TV or print ad because of interaction. A website has so many working parts that people can use in different ways - click, share, scroll, sign up, comment, play, view - and via different interfaces - Firefox, IE (not 6!), and a gazillion differently sized monitors. Taking all of this into account takes time, i.e. is not cheap!

Also, the Tribal DDB speaker made a good point when he said that digital work is not like a TV spot that you hand to your media agency for launch and then never have to worry about. A website is live, real time and you need to monitor regularly. This also takes time, i.e. is really not cheap!

But that's the value of an agency, folks! We will do all of that so you can still get your beauty sleep :P

All in all though, I was impressed by a lot of the finalists. Digital is coming. List for all Boomerang finalists and winners here.

IMMAP Summit Day 2: Afternoon sessions saved the summit

Day 2 for the IMMAP Summit 2009. Today was much better than yesterday!

Highlights

If the mobile phone is the most ubiquitous media in the world today, why isn't anybody advertising?

It certainly isn't because we aren't trying! Today speakers from Yahoo and MMA gave us slide after slide about how ownership for the mobile phone greatly exceeds any other media. Yesterday we were pitched SMS 2.0 - backgrounds, color, emoticons and... social ads in every text! We also heard today from Emmanuel Allix (MD, Pudding Media) about how many more opportunities there are to bring brands mobile - such as a branded ringback tone.

I don't know about you but I would never agree to social ads on my phone or subject the good people who dial my mob# to hear a sales pitch before I pick up! If this is the kind of intrusive advertising we are banking on, it will never work.

What it seems to come down to is giving users applications or content that is compelling, entertaining or useful; "branded utility". The winsome case study so sucessful that it was presented twice during the Summit was Guinness' Passport to Greatness. Created for a rugby tournament in Hong Kong, the mobile app "the world's first talking mobile event guide". I.e. mobile translator - great idea!

Matthias Kunze from Yahoo! Mobile also put it nicely when he said that if a friend sent you a coupon for a restaurant you wouldn't say Oh no, an AD. So the challenge is also to develop good ideas and great creative work specifically for mobile .

Of course, there were still a few sales pitches...

Teresita Villareal (Customer Marketing, ABS-CBN) was without a doubt the worst speaker in the conference. Many other speakers might have made sales pitches, but at least they were talking about digital! Ms. Villareal seeemed to spend about half her slides on ABS' non-digital media like magazines, radio and TV channels. FAIL.

I guess this was because ABS-CBN is going for that "360" integrated approach. But who isn't?

She presented a few case studies, including one that showed a widget on a branded Multiply page, but ended up looking like a real dunce when she was asked if Multiply (which ABS now partly owns) allows third party widget / app development the way Facebook and Friendster do. She said something like "yes... but you need to work with us". Right.

The afternoon sessions were the highlight of the conference.

SME's go digital

Mark Laccay of Drip (who performed prior to the talk during lunch) talked about the band needed to figure out how to take advantage of the web and social media to spread their music without getting into intellectual property problems. Enter Creative Commons.

Now they can give out their music and let others remix it, interpret it, put it in their indie films.

Mark also shared that there is merit in allowing music to be passed along for free. His example was that cover bands in Hard Rock Cafe always play the song "September" and are probably breaking some intellectual property laws, but that his fifteen-year-old cousin will now be open to buying the Earth, Wind and Fire CD. My first reaction to this was why a teenager is hanging out in Hard Rock Cafe! But he makes a good point. When people remix, re-use, re-apply music, it reaches more people and gives it higher value.

Rianna Trinidad told a great story about how her product gained positive ROI using Multiply as their only storefront. They found out that doctors don't recommend shoes for babies because it hampers development. So they make socks for babies, only they look like shoes!

Rustan's initially turned them down - because they were already carrying regular socks. Ah but the lesson here could be that there is infinite space in the mind for new positioning! And now Rustan's is one of their distributors. Al Ries and Jack Trout would be very proud.

Lastly Anton Diaz of Our Awesome Planet talked about how his blog evolved into the fully monetized version that it is today. He gave some good tips on making news and not just waiting to write about it.

I never would have thought of a band or a blogger as an SME...

Dentsu is my idol

At the first IMMAP in 2007, one of the best talks was also by a Dentsu speaker. Even then, before the rise of Facebook and Twitter, they shared their shift from AIDMA to AISAS, making room for search and word-of-mouth. Testament to the more sophisticated digital market in Japan but also to their thought leadership.

For this Summit, Masaki Iwata + Translator shared the basics of their framework and a few viral case studies. Points to note:

• In Japan, there is a shift in the Most Influential technology based on age group. For the baby boomers, TV is still the most influential. For the middle aged, it is PC Internet. For the kids and teens though, it is already mobile internet. I want to go to there.
• The top three social networking sites in Japan are all home-grown!
• He shared about about the development of AISAS (Attention, Interest, Search, Action, Share)- because the Interent plays a key role in all parts of the consideration process (Awareness, Consideration, Purchase). People find out about new products from friends, research potential purchases, then they also buy online.

Great case studies as well:

• Pair Movie for Sony and artist Juju - Specialized mobile content that engages users in multiples - not an RBT with an ad!
• Best viral videos, for the Toyota IQ
  > Eggs
  > Clean up
  > Catch
  > Heading
  > Parking

Boomerang winners in the hot seat

Was writing about this to be included in this one post but it looked too long so will put it in a separate post instead. Key takeaways for me were that

• These successes were all integrated with ATL. Ultimately they would not have gotten the numbers without massive ATL support. This is key for me since so many of the clients we deal with who actually do digital are not willing to utilize their TVCs to drive users to their web assets! In other words...
• You need a client who is willing to first, take the plunge, and second, properly support! How will anybody know your website is there if we don't find a way to tell them?
• It comes down to big ideas and content. Online, users are engaged in great content for free so it takes a lot to impress.

My recommendations for Summit next year -

• Have fewer speakers who are just going to give sales pitches. If we want them to enumerate the different ad spaces on their websites, we can go to them for FREE!
• More panel discussions from relevant speakers, like the SME group and the Boomerang winners. There seems to be synergy in getting speakers talking together.
• More from Dentsu Japan!
• Can we invite some thought leaders, like maybe... David Armano or haha Ashton Kutcher?
• Ultimately we need to hear more INNOVATION or GROUNDBREAKING information that will help our work. We don't need to be told on year 3 of the IMMAP Summit that "the consumer is in control". If he weren't in control there would be no need for a Summit.... or my day job haha.

The most interesting parts of the Summit for me were hearing the problems / challenges that other agencies, marketers and brands have come accross, and their digital solutions. Hope to see more of that next year.

my digital work

Took a programming class last year on Sessions.edu to learn the basics of HTML. We were starting to do more websites and I wanted to get a better understanding of the kind of work involved in doing a website and get a feel for the basics.

I ended up with Web Design I, which I figured I could hanlde since I could do all of the requirements - one of which was to be able to use Dreamweaver. At the time I could actually sort of use Dreamweaver.... though super trial-and-error! Turned out they meant know how to use Dreamweaver as in hand code! Yikes.

Anyway I sort of just taught myself and tried to figure everything out. But not in a sloppy way (I hope); this is W3C validated!

Here is my portfolio :) Which I should get a URL for and SEO... Hmmm next project.

Boomerang award finalist!

We submitted two campaigns to this year's Boomerang Awards - Globe's Paramihan (which means, if you will, "plentify") Challenge and UN WFP Coins. Both were declared Finalists - Coins in the Cyber Boomerang category and Paramihan in the Best Innovation category.

Coins - The UN World Food Programme is doing great workin Mindanao. I got to see them in action when they invited us down south. It is amazing that so many people go hungry and that so many children end up missing school because of it! And finding out that feeding someone only costs P5 ($0.10) made it seem silly that hunger exists at all. I mean, anybody has a spare five bucks! You probably have 5 pesos on your desk, in your car, in your wallet, in your couch, etc... And so the wonderful creatives came up with this.

UN WFP "Coins"

Accounts: Maricel Pangilinan-Arenas, Bea Atienza

Creatives: Budjette Tan, Shirley Tan, Giselle Bautista

UN WFP Page takeover

Project Management: Jay Chiu

Creatives: Jay Arellano

Paramihan - What this campaign was supposed to do was inrcrease awareness and creatively engage the target to rise above the clutter.

There was an above-the-ine campaign but it took awhile before we reached the paramihan ("plentify") idea. Once that was finalized, it was important to give it legs. Given that there was above-the-line but no above-the-line support for online... social media was the answer and Johnny Stunts was born. This was our first social media character, so "first" that he was casted interally. But what makes me so happy about this campaign is how social media really pushed the participation to great results. We were afraid that the concept would be "paramihan" ("plentify") but nobody would join. Thank god it was quite the opposite. A good look at the campaign.

GLOBE "Paramihan Challenge"

Accounts: Maine Gatbonton, Rose Natanauan, Andrea Santos, Bea Atienza

Creatives: Budjette Tan, Shirley Tan, Norman Ramos, Jay Pangilinan, Sunny Dumayas

Project Management: Jay Chiu, Zinzi Culalic

Social Media Marketing: Kankan Lim, Elaine Uy

Content Production: Yehey team

We were happy to accept our little Boomerang Finalist trophies at the awards held earlier, right after IMMAP Day 1. Congratulations to all the finalists and winners. Here's to even better results next year!

IMMAP Summit Day 1: So-so

Spent the day at SMX for the IMMAP Summit 2009. Some good stuff, a lot of boring stuff! Anyway here are the...

Highlights

If "digital delivers" (the theme of this year's summit), where are the billings?

A recurring comment from almost all presenters is that the growth of Internet use in the Philippines is not being matched by advertising spend in digital. This was expressed by speakers coming from both client and agency side.

Three clients who spoke today had interesting takes on this

• Charmaine Canillas (Petron) said that it boils down to measurement. While they see the engagement potential of the medium, there is just no hard-and-fast way to measure performance online the way we do on traditional. For example, there is no counterpart yet for Reach and Frequency.
• For James Lafferty (Ret. GM, P&G), digital is just too expensive. Though P&G's high-end or youth brands spend up to 50% of their campaign budgets on digital, he finds that digital is still "2-40% more expensive than traditional per reach point". (Hope I got that quote right! ...To be fair, he also encouraged the audience to try things and take risks online if they believe in the idea.)
• The most inspring was Sandra Puno (Communication Director, Nestle). Let me cut in a bit to say that I admire Nestle very much for seeing the potential of digital before a lot of other brands, and really supporting the medium with experimentation on different kinds of campaigns. Anyway Sandra said that while business results are of course important, it isn't all about money, and it can't just be about money.

I agree with all of them. So many clients we've spoken to know how important a touchpoint digital is. But given the risk, they opt to put their (often limited) budget in more tried-and-tested media. And it takes quite a bit of convincing to get them to try digital.

What does this mean?

• Per Lafferty: Baby steps. Try and fail cheaply. But there needs to be a breakthrough in cost structure - cut it down to something hypercompetitive.
• Canillas: Bodies like IMMAP need to work on standardizing measurement (a) across the industry, and (b) to something more comparable with traditional media.
• Puno: I think she mentioned something about the value of having a good agency partner. I definitely agree with that, in that powerful creative ideas can break the mold and gain both eyeballs and business results.

Ramon Bautista is the ultimate digital talent!

He was the star of three digital campaigns featured in the IMMAP Summit today - Petron, Nescafe's Listo campaign, and later on, Sandbox, the latter two of which won Boomerang awards by the way.

Having worked with him for Gloo about a year ago (which I can't link to because the site is now defunct), he is great at producing content, he promotes that content on his Brewrats radio show, and he is so deadpan-ly funny... which seems to be clicking with people online! Go Dan Michael.

If you can't get Ramon but are going to do a video about social media or the information (r)evolution, it's gotta be accompanied by Fatboy Slim's “Right Here, Right Now”.

Rahul Vasudev of Mediacom ended his presentation with this video from Socialnomics. I've seen a few comments online where people accuse Socialnomics of basically ripping off the famous Did You Know (2.0) videos. I sort of agree but in any case, all three videos have the same music! It is apparent that the best way to present this kind of thought-provoking video is via Fatboy Slim.

So sorry IMMAP, but shouldn't some of these vendors be paying us for the chance to deliver their sales pitches, instead of the other way around?

Many of the other speakers seemed to be making 45-min long sales pitches...

• Yahoo! - I love the Purple Hunt but we didn't need to hear about it for forty-five minutes!
• Nielsen - Was hoping to see some new data that wasn't included in the study they just released. Besides that, when are those online measurement tools finally going to get to the Philippines?
• Deploy Digital, ihub, Admax, especially Affle! - They didn't really say anything new or groundbreaking and ultimately they were selling, selling, selling, selling!
• Eyeblaster - Sales pitch for sure but I really liked the rich media ad that lets you record a video right on the banner! Nice.

To be perfectly honest, didn't really get anything new from today's talks. This would have been useful if you've never done anything online and you're sort of looking to get into it. You would have heard a nice list of what to do, what to avoid and now have a list of vendors who can do creative, media, measurement!

Hope tomorrow will be much, much more informative.

Reading List

Am in various stages of reading all of these books... and these are just the work-related ones!

Globe DUO Blaze

Rough translation
(By the way, I think I did a terrible job, this sounds like the write up on a pirated DVD... It's really hard to translate Tagalog directly from English!)

Can't count
[Phone screens read "Can't take it anymore!" and "Goodbye!"]
those commiting suicide
out of jealousy.

Because of Globe DUO.
This is the only mobile and landline in one
So for calls, no more time limit - on Duo or any landline.

Go Globe now.
Duo or die.

Wtf is social media?

Nicely crafted presentation on social media and why markters should give a rat's ass.

What the F**K is Social Media: One Year Later

View more documents from Marta Kagan.

Link to the original presentation.

Perrier Conversations

Love this :)

Perrier seems to be making a comment on our age of digital conversation with this new short-run packaging. Each product is wrapped in packaging that has bubbles of conversation.

Repost from PSFK.