social media tonality

Brands ride on trending hashtags to gain views and interactions. Participating in a high-traction topic increases their chances of getting attention from people who wouldn't otherwise have been exposed to their social presence.

This has served brands well in many cases. Oreo's spontaneous response during the Superbowl power outage and, a little closer to home, KitKat Philippines' tweet while Facebook was momentarily down both impressed fans and drove global PR pickups.

 

But not every hashtag is appropriate for brands to participate in. The trades were abuzz when DiGiorno pizza tweeted using #WhyIStayed, tying it to pizza consumption without recognizing that the hashtag was actually being used by people opening up about why they had stayed in abusive relationships.

John Oliver took note of this and shared his very strong feelings that brands shouldn't try to participate in every possible conversation, and that most people don't want them in regular conversations:

DiGiorno's hasthag use was obviously a mistake an oversight that the company has apologized for. There are lessons to be learned about thorough hashtag research as well as troubleshooting to see if they might be hijacked by trolls and with the brand eventually included in a thread of unsavory messages.

That's common sense though. Should, per John O., brands just shut up online?

In the Philippines and I suspect many South East Asian countries consumers have a much higher openness to brands and branded conversations. In one focus group I did with lower-SEC moms they described billboards and Facebook social ads as sources of information on important product news to pay attention to. Our consumers don't hesitate to like brand pages and interact with brand posts. In which case I think it doesn't turn anybody off to see KitKat commenting on Facebook being down. After all, KitKat's consumers are experieincing the same thing and in that context it tells current and potential consumers that the brand knows what they're about, that it has a personality and that it can be witty and have a sense of humor.

Still, it will be worth it to measure if consumers feel like brands are putting their noses where they aren't invited or shouldn't be involved. And even in the open web, maybe brands need to self-restrict.

Smart's Free Mobile Internet Offer

In a piece on Philippine mobile growth opportunities back in 2010 I said that telcos should let us surf for free. Smart has done just that!

Their announcement last week made headlines. Though they were criticized for having only a 30MB daily limit, they have updated their offer with "Unli Facebook" which I imagine is the service that many Filipinos want mobile access to anyway.

Is this a move that they hope will further quash Globe? (Who sounded like real sour grapes after Smart's announcement went out.) Or is it an attempt to lure more subscribers into the mobile browsing habit? Will Facebook give Smart a usage rebate after they see Philippine engagement rates surge even higher?

The offer is on until January next year. It would be interesting to see, from the Smart side, if this offer gets users into the paid data habit.

What's your problem?

Finding new ways to digital innovation

YMMA 2014: Digital Strategy is about Problem-Solving from Bea Atienza

Mobile Philippines: 2014 Update

Last Five Years: Re-examining mobile penetration and marketing 

Mobile is one of the most exciting digital arenas. I first wrote about Philippine mobile adoption in 2010. I spent a good chunk of 2010 in New York and mobile was the biggest buzzword. Everyone seemed to be asking, What's your mobile strategy? You end up comparing the digital trends in developed markets with our own situation. Everybody here seemed to be buzzing about the "killer app", but it didn't come, at least not from a local brand. Even for some of the clients I worked with who were ready to forge ahead with mobile, it was tough to strategize given the market gaps. New technology was mostly available on smartphones, which for a long time was Apple-dominated and limited to higher-income brackets and which excluded lower-income segments still on legacy phones. Despite our established mobile penetration, it has taken awhile to see significant numbers in smartphone penetration.

This year seems to be a tipping point. Digital and marketing experts are now asking local brands to ensure that their mobile strategy in place. We have some encouraging numbers – 15% smartphone penetration, still much lower compared to our Southeast Asian counterparts, but this is expected to surge to 50% in 2015.

In recent years we've seen stronger Pinoy adoption of global digital trends.

Major Developments
In 2010 I identified three key areas that were barriers to mobile adoption in the Philippines. Major developments in these areas have driven local penetration and usage.

Hardware: The Android OS accelerated the launch of local phone manufacturers and lowered phone price for lower-income segments, driving smart- and feature phone penetration. MyPhone, Cherry Mobile and Star Mobile have spurred smartphone growth with handsets priced in the USD 50 – 250 range. Even these lower-priced phones have cameras and can access the web, and through Android have access to the Play Store for apps. Android is the most popular operating system, with 91% of Philippine smartphones running on it. (Pinaroc, 2013)

Connectivity: Telcos have done their part! They've been offering data plans and products for prepaid users - such as standalone mobile browsing offers and social networking access bundled with Unli products - to make it easier to go online.

 

         

     

The next hurdle: Speed and reliability is still a big issue, however. Many Filipinos are not satisfied with their internet speeds on PC, let alone on mobile. This is definitely a gap area that needs to be addressed.


Content: With access to the Apple App store or the Google Play store, users now have so many apps to choose from. "32% of smartphone owners download six or more apps per month." (OnDevice, 2014) Social media sites Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, what I would guess are the most popular mobile apps in the country, all have mobile interfaces. Games remain to be the most popular type of app download, and music streaming services like Spotify or local Spinnr have become extremely popular.

The next opportunity: Locally-created, locally-contextualized apps and social/mobile content. We're using a lot of global social networks and apps but when will we find our clear voice in software content?

You're Up, Marketing!

There seem to be different grades of mobile strategy adoption. The most aggressive I've seen locally has probably been ABSCBN Mobile - an entirely new convergent product segment built with a bet on mobile and content.

Marketers certainly have more toys to play with now, depending on what is optimal for their digital strategy: Mobile Ads, Apps for Enterprise-level (e.g. pizza delivery), Apps for campaigns, Mobile content (e.g. Spotify for Coke or Spinnr for Smart), Mobile Commerce. On a more basic level much of the content developed for Twitter, Facebook and especially Instagram are accessible on mobile and can/should be considered part of a mobile strategy.

Local brands may not have maximized mobile yet, but it's encouraging that penetration is growing. The exact areas I identified in 2010 as barriers to mobile adoption have all been at least partially addressed. The landscape is ripe for innovation.

Sources:
http://www.zdnet.com/the-philippines-continues-to-embrace-android-7000024072/
http://www.slideshare.net/OnDevice/philippines-mobile-internet-trends 

Get Lucky

I won something! I got word late last year that I had been nominated for Mansmith's annual Young Marketing Masters award. After a few rounds of judging I found out I had been selected as one of nine awardees. For the award ceremony, each of us were asked to prepare a thank you speech that talked also about lessons learned. Here's was mine:

The one thing I’ve learned in my career is to get lucky.

I know Han Solo said “There’s no such thing as luck.”

But we can get lucky.

Getting lucky doesn’t mean waiting around for something great to happen.

It means searching to find that one thing you love to do – or at least something you enjoy,
enough to do it for 8 hours a day, or in our case in advertising, 10-16 hours! a day, and sometimes weekends, too.

It means knocking on doors, not giving up when people say no because you have no advertising experience, and trying until someone takes you in and gives you a shot.

Get lucky –

means always reading and constantly studying,

keeping up with what’s going on in our industry that changes so fast, to develop a gut feel for what’s up next.
And coming across things like digital and riding on, thinking that might be what’s up next.  

It means being ok with experimenting and failing, even when as the digital person nobody knows where you fit in the organization and you end up with seven bosses in three years because there’s never been a Digital Account person or a Digital Planner in the agency before.

Get lucky –

means finding like-minded teammates who also really enjoy the nerdy advertising challenge of identifying marketing issues and insights,
and who will spar with you to help you find the answer to the tough brief that was due yesterday – because everything was always due yesterday!,
or

Finding the dream digital team who will miss meals, dates, sleep, to get our best work out the door,
who always invite you for a drink when you’re stressed out,
and who also toast with you to the things that have gone brilliantly.

It means finding amazing mentors who teach, who coach, who say no, who shout yes.

Get lucky –

means getting older and getting to become a leader and hopefully getting to pass something on to the next generation whose turn it is to have no experience yet in advertising.

It means expanding horizons to be able to find the best new challenges, and coming to grips with getting out of your comfort zone to take them on because sometimes they turn out to be across the sea.

It means staying close to the awesome parents who told you it was ok, and that you should, do what you love – I was and have been very, very lucky.

Thank you again! 

MRM has PH's top viewed locally-produced ad

YouTube Philippines released its list of top viewed ads in 2013. MRM topped the list with the highest-viewed local ad. Creative did a fantastic job on this video, which was one of Beau's last projects before we left MRM. It was produced specifically for digital, which allowed them to come up with longer material. Also on the list is our work for Alpo (#7), which El and I worked on. Good showing by Team MRM!

Top 10 most popular ads in the country:

1. Dove Real Beauty Sketches

2. Ramon Bautista vs. Parokya ni Edgar (Nescafe PH)

3. Ely Buendia, Rico Blanco, Raimund Marasigan and Barbie Almalbis collaborate (smartcorporate) 
4. Iya Shines (Pantene Philippines) 
5. Four Seasons Tang-Go with Ryzza! (Tang MNL) 
6. Ramon Bautista, SmartNet Da Moves (smartcorporate) 

7. Toffee’s Best Dog Bath Ever (Nestle Purina PH)

8. Introducing Samsung Galaxy S4 (Samsung Mobile)
9. Labels Against Women (Pantene Philippines)
10. Jessy Mendiola surprises Teng Brothers (McDonald’s PH)

Where digital is headed

Thanks, Adobo!

new scenery

There's no way I could have predicted what was going to happen this year, the end of an era. When I look back the good times stand out, but there were things I needed to move on from and grow out of. After a few years discontent had started to seep into the everyday. There were always great challenges, inspiring mentors, awesome teammates. There was also more corporate haberdashery than I would like to have witnessed, the general advertising burnout, and the wear and tear that comes with building something new. The good times stand out the most.

It all came to a head this year, finally time for a break. On my last day I wanted to post as that I had ended my longest relationship - 6.5 years with M.E.

Who would have guessed that I would be re-adopted, this time by the mother ship. They took me to Singapore, Indonesia and Tokyo, but where I ended up was here in Shanghai.

From team lead to solo flight, from one market to fifteen, from internals to conference calls. From creatives just desks away to creatives miles and plane rides away. From my all-Pinoy AEs to the United Colors of Benetton account team. From beverages to cars, from the D to the R. From comfort zone to the great unknown.

Ni hao.

The next marketing supercontinent

The Pangea Theory tells us that all land used to be consolidated in one giant mass. Over centuries different pieces broke off and shifted into what are now the disparate continents. Some scientists believe that in time all land could join back up and form a sort of Pangea 2.0, or supercontinent.

The same trend seems to be happening in advertising.

As media behavior evolved into disparate channels so did agency offerings - digital, CRM, activation, PR disbundled from traditional creative and were, in many multinational cases, given their own brand or company names. But as clients discovered new agencies in each discipline they began to split billings and revenues.

This has become a critical issue for mainstream agencies, as marketing budgets are slowly but surely shifting to digital and other non-traditional channels. In certain categories (B2B ones for example) it is possible to skip TV altogether and focus completely on digital and PR. As non-traditional momentum grows, agencies must watch the back door and ensure that budgets are secure even if priorities shift out of ATL channels.

The answer seems to be the industry's latest buzzword: Integration. 

This idea is not new. Media agencies and marketing plans have been "360" for several decades. Our discipline itself is often called Integrated Marketing Communications. Several marketing books, including one I recently revisited, talked about Integration of mainstream advertising with digital as early as in 2003. Yet in the Philippines and even across Asia, silos are still the norm.

It seems inevitable that agency offerings will shift to accommodate the entire consumer journey in order to retain end-to-end client business. Is the next wave of ad agency organizational development going to lead us to Marketing Pangea 2.0?

As this happens agencies must figure out as a starting point -What exactly must be integrated?

Three potential models:

• PEOPLE:  Everybody in the agency (planning, account, creative) knows enough about each discipline to be able to do the work for any channel.
  My take: Not realistic - are there enough people like this to fill an agency?
• PROCESS:  Different disciplines, different specialists, who work all together, all the time, on every project, to collaboratively create complementary pieces of the final output.
  My take: Maybe not the most efficient model.
• PRODUCT:  May be led by any discipline but output represents a holistic consumer experience, ideally moving beyond "same idea across touchpoints" to pre-idea vector planning.
  My take: My preference. Probably because I'm specialist-biased. More on this in another entry because it would take an entire other entry.

It will be exciting to track these developments and see what exactly the advertising integrated supercontinent will shape up to become. The game is changing and the agency that figures this out first could end up winner of the Integration land rush. And who's to say this won't end up a non-traditional agency?

Whose line is it anyway?

Turns out, the Line belongs to the CFO.

The ad industry still refers to media as "above-" or "below-the-line". But what are these terms based on? Is it media types, with certain channels forever tagged as "above" and others "below"? Or is it based on media usage, delineating between which channels are "traditional" and "non-traditional"?

It turns out that the origin of the advertising "line" belongs to finance, and separates the services that generated profit from those given away for free. The birth of advertising agencies began with media agencies that made huge commissions on placement buys. In time they started offering creative services to assist clients in coming up with content to fill up their bought ad space. The commissions used to be so substantial that agencies eventually gave away an entire slew of support services - PR, Direct marketing, etc. (Source: "The Future of Advertising". Joe Cappo. 2003.) 

Evolution of the line... Where did it go?

It was a surprise to discover this piece of advertising history as the industry seems to have arrived at a shared understanding of the terms, using them to refer to traditional or non-traditional media. But the profitability angle sheds light on why those characterized as "below-the-line" media have carried a stigma for being less important, more by-the-way and more tactical. The result has been the continued prioritization of ATL in the development process, almost always strategized and conceptualized before BTL guys ever get a crack at a client brief. (As if business problems are so single-minded that only one vector should represent the lion's share of a marketing solution.) As it often happens for us in digital, briefings are often cascades of the thinking and ideation that ATL guys have already done. The first thing that is developed is the TV spot, after which the "big idea" can be carried over into other mediums.

Developing campaigns and starting with an ATL-geared approach may have been all right in the mass media age where the single-minded ad message was enough to drive any and all campaigns. But with the fragmentation of viewers and proliferation of channels, messages (while still very, very important) are no longer enough to drive good advertising. Additional thinking must be done to figure out the roles channels play vs. each other so that they can be most relevant in a brand or advertising ecosystem.

Today people say marketing must be "through the line", which is perhaps correct as agencies now collect fees on all services rendered. But maybe the line has completely disappeared, not in its original sense of fees and profit but based on the more recent need to have to call out which media is the most traditional or essential. What should matter is to be able to understand how channels mix, the roles they play complementary to each other, and how to use and strategize the use of each medium in a context-relevant way.

speech

This week our agency won gold.

It was 2010 when I returned from an in-depth digital immersion in New York. I had no idea where I was supposed to go next but Planning for MRM ended up that next move. I could never have imagined that I would eventually end up in Singapore at the Campaign Asia awards, shortlisted as SEA Account Person of the Year. (Despite its title the award is for both suits and strategic planners.) By some crazy miracle I ended up winning.

I never even aspired to this because only creatives win awards! Not planners. Especially not specialist digital planners. But what must have given me the edge is the hardcore education I've received from so many stellar mentors throughout the years.

This is my feeling-Oscar winner post but 
I absolutely need to thank these people who believed in me and taught me through the years.

MARICEL & DINO: My first mentors, and first set of advertising parents. They showed me that, in an industry that can be a little too cutthroat sometimes, absolute trust can exist in the agency as long as there is some hot pan de sal, some of Alex's sisig and as long as bosses are leaders, too.

BUDJETTE: My first-ever advertising boss! Remember? As an intern on his Globe Prepaid creative team I picked up an appreciation for ideas, art and copy. Through the years that I've been so lucky to have kept working with him, He has been the best example of a leader who will never abandon his team and the work. He will tirelessly search for truths and even creative articulations that properly convey brand role yet set his people free to grow. Replete with creative temper/ament yet devoid of cliche creative airs, he is the Madonna of creative - able to re-tool and re-invent through the evolution of our industry.

NANDY: I will never forget the day Nandy asked me to move to Planning. Through intense one-on-one internals, he tooled me up for (hopefully) a career's worth of briefs, campaigns and brand strategies. He remains the Planning bar to which I aspire - a masterclass in razorsharp problem-definition, insighitng and brand stewardship. He is the Fr. Dacanay of our discipline - the "tough love" teacher who will stretch each learning opportunity. Most importantly is he a leader who will inspire people to reach outside themselves in work, craft, grace and integrity.

GEN, VIBOY, BEAU & EZ (and later Jen!): Almost everything I know about Planning I learned from watching these guys work. I'm a baby in this discipline, only 2.5 years old! But I joined the best team in the country, and they took me under their wings. They were willing to partner with and teach me, and indulged me in many existential Planning discussions. My original planning family, who taught by example.

DONALD: Our fearless leader who inspires confidence from his hardcore marketing background, solid business instincts and slightly experimental management approach. He espouses ongoing education to sharpen our craft and has been so willing to take chances on young people with possibly ridiculous ideals. A man with vision and a personal roadmap to carry us to the top spot.

MY TEAM: I wouldn't have gotten through this insane year without Beau & El. They inspire me everyday to be the best leader I can be, and push me to create room for each of us to grow. Their crazy hard and awesome work assures me that our future is so bright.

TEAM MRM: The dedicated and tireless OT crew! Who sticks with each problem until it is solved, no matter how many hours and sleepless nights it takes. Accounts, creatives, community managers, production guys whose passion never seems to run out and who remind me everyday why it is more fun in MRM.

The sweetest part of all this is that our agency was also awarded gold, as Philippine Digital Agency of the Year by this regional body. This award succeeds a local Digital Excellence AOY award, which we won earlier this year.

Two years ago, and even last week, I would have laughed this thought off. But as I stream of conscious-ly posted in our MRM Manila page: We don't know what will come our way next year, but as of today, this week, this month, we are the best in the business. 

where do we go from here?

Facebook has been the king of Philippine digital marketing for the past two-three years. I don't think this will change drastically next year, but I think we will have to start moving past this gated community.


The Philippine digital branding ecosystem skipped a stage when brands went straight into social media and skipped building the "Web 1.0" assets - websites with sound SEO, e-commerce portals, etc. Most "motherbrand" FMCGs (the Nestles, P&Gs or Unilevers, even the San Miguels or Universal Robina Corps) do have properties but it is not rare to come across a brand without a local and content-rich dot.com. Many marketers we were working with in 2009-2010 were hesitant to build websites. There was no social ad equivalent back then, and banner ads were expensive to produce, optimize and place. So, many brands skipped building these sites. Luckily Facebook came along, and saved marketers from having to pay for programming, CMS, database management. Even social ads are much more cost-effective than the usual banner ads.

But I think that next year will one to go back to digital basics that we might have skipped in the rush and excitement to build Facebook communities.
Because for brands looking to create a deeper layer of utility and engagement beyond the Wall, apps may not be enough. Many clients have started to ask us to start think about what comes after Facebook. What happens to our community when people stop signing up or frequenting the social network? I don't think there will be another Facebook after this (just like nobody really succeeded Google), but there could be a new trend after social networking. And while we have the Likes, brands don't necessarily own the database of their hundred thousand-to-million fans.

*Note: This is completely based on personal experience and observation.

Ultimately the issue is one of ownership. Many brands don't necessarily own their databases, unless they've secured additional contact information through an app. Most of all, brands are subject to each of Facebook's changes and re-designs. We once developed an app for a client to give fans a feature missing on Facebook, only to have that exact feature launched as we were programming. So brands looking to be more content-heavy may start going back to the dot.com. Content will probably always best-propagated on social network sites but this doesn't mean that wholly-owned properties cannot work complementary to communities.

This might be too old school for brands and agencies in more developed markets. But a lot of us might have room and occasion to build and/or improve on these foundational assets.

It is an honor just to be nominated!

We found out today that MRM Manila has been awarded Philippines Digital Agency of the Year by Campaign Asia, already identified as GOLD winner from the first round of judging. AWESOMESAUCE!!!!! It is always awesome to win agency-wide awards because it acknowledges and celebrates the team spirit that drives MRM. It wasn't always like this but we have come a long way in two+ years and it is rewarding to see the fruits of the company we have built.

And as if that weren't enough, the individuals we entered in the awards were all shortlisted!

• Donald Lim is shortlisted for Agency Head of the Year
• Budjette Tan is shortlisted for Creative of the Year
• Me! Bea Atienza is shortlisted for Account Person of the Year  

This is amazeballs. Winners will be announced on December 10, but it is enough for me that our agency won and that all of us were even put on this list!

our baby is two million fans old

We inherited the Nescafe page at a few hundred thousand fans and a few weeks ago it hit two million. We celebrated this milestone at a Fans Day event held two Saturdays ago.

Our community has a way of making those of us working on the page feel so deeply rewarded. We hit a million fans on Christmas day last year, a great present to the brand and agency teams. Our engagement rate has remained within a fantastic average, even as the page has grown enormously. And now over two million people have agreed to keep conversations going with Nescafe.

What we have been allowed to to right on this brand 

• Pay attention to BITE-SIZED. It is difficult to allow little bits of content to speak for a brand, especially for traditional agencies who are used to "pasabog", "bigness" and executions that draw "libog" (as our Chairman often demands). This is completely valid but it doesn't mean that individual status updates that are culturally-relevant and even brand-focused can't draw attention, generate participation and develop affinity. 
• Think LONG-TERM. Instead of focusing on app or webisode one-offs, we have been able to craft year-long plans that have continuously built up to our current standing. I don't know if I would ever be able to prove this, but I imagine communities can feel when they are being engaged in a "promo" or "campaign" rather than in an ongoing conversation. And this might make fans more or less willing to stay involved. But our community has seen the commitment to keep the conversation going for 2+ years, and understand that the brand is committed for the long haul.
• Be open to STRATEGY-led initiatives. Nescafe Points and Nescafe Insights are two efforts I'm so proud of having been the planner for. It is amazing that we have been able to keep trying to change behavior and learn from our community. We are so lucky that our internal partners and clients allow Planners to have our own point-of-view.

• Allow creatives to PLAY. At the same time, our creatives have gotten their own play time as well! The second iteration of Points, Kapihan, and two recent videos (one starring digital sensation Petra and another featuring Ramon Bautista & Frank Magallona) are proof points to this.

Exciting times - we are now in the process of mapping out 2013. Here is hoping we can keep fans engaged and happy for a third year and counting.

extracurricular activities

The case for continuing education


Our whole team is studying!
Beau, our Strategic Planner, is enrolled in Gamification on Coursera.com,
El, our associate, is reviewing Idea crafting on Skillshare.com, and 
I've just started graduate studies at The New School. 

Given our insane work schedules and frequent overtime, actually going back to school even just for one course at a time would be impossible. But because we're able to take classes virtually at the time and place of our choosing, we can keep studying.

I get a dorky kick out of how we're digital practitioners studying in such a digital way, but it really is exciting that it is now easier than ever to keep learning about practically any topic through self-initiated research and even formal study.

Being digital means constantly refreshing.

Ongoing learning is something I feel really strongly about, especially in the service of gaining fuel that will help us master our craft. And for people like me, there is joy even in the learning process alone :)

Throughout my career, connectivity helped me deepen my understanding of digital. Reading blogs and Twitter feeds keep me updated about marketing and tech developments. Online classes have allowed me to explore topics in-depth – HTML programming in 2008 to understand the building blocks of the web (on Sessions.edu), and a Certificate in Digital Media Marketing at New York University (partly in person and partly online) that exposed me to digital mechanics and "How"s of marketing in this space.

Now that I have people working with me on our digital team, I'm glad I can infuse their work paths with this same value. As strategic planners, we need to have a handle on new technologies and a working understanding of new behaviors created as a result of interaction in this space.

Digital is completely new and thus requires some amount of study and critical thinking - could be informal, could be at a school, but serious digital practitioners need to put the time in to understanding the space. And as things are constantly changing, we must study, re-tool and re-fresh continuously.

Just realized that this image could well be mistaken for the Digital Sh*t.
But this conference was quite the opposite!

Two days of intense information overload. Still absorbing and thinking through all that was said and tweeted. But will post something soon!

TV Hashtags, Part 2

TV shows use hastags to organize real-time word-of-mouth about new shows and new seasons.

(Click for TV Hashtags, Part 1)

Suits, a brilliant new legal show on the USA network, leads viewers to Twitter with a question + hashtag. In an episode where junior associate Mike decides to keep something from boss Harvey, the show asks "Have you ever lied to your boss?" and indicates #suits as the hashtag.

Project Runway, back for its ninth season, is inviting viewers to vote for their favorite contestants using hashtags. At the end of the season the show will award a Fan Favorite based on Twitter hashtag votes.

Hashtags can be pretty messy - I'm certainly guilty of making up my own hashtags even if I don't know (or care) if anyone else is using them. But mainstream media is one way to provide the common keyword that consolidates and unites conversastion on Twitter.

to the backchannel!

(Or, TV Hashtags, Part 1)


TV shows use hashtags to organize real-time word-of-mouth about finale episodes.

On Vampire Diaries, fans were invited to talk about the show on Twitter with a designated hashtag. (No, I am not ashamed of my keen interest in shows that feature high school / college students like Vampire or now-defunct Greek.) In this case #Klaus, the villain of the season. It makes me wonder if the writers were asked to select a name for the character that would be unique to and associated with the show. (Past villains like Katherine or Elijah don't really have unique names.)

The (pretty awesome) Fringe finale invited fans to tag their tweets with the show title.

As viewers start to shift behavior to watching TV at their preferred time (TiVo) and in their preferred format (online), one of the biggest challenges facing TV networks in the US is adding value to the broadcast experience. Is Twitter the fix? 


Watching live TV in the US has become a two-screen activity for some, where the show airs on television and the user follows or participates in the real-time commentary on Twitter. It gives an interesting perspective into other veiwers' and fans' reactions at the same time you are all watching.


I don't think this will be a problem for a long time in the Philippines but it would be interesting to take some of the experiments in real-time commentary to our own viewing experiences: Should the UAAP flash a hashtag on screen as the series unfolds? Should controversial print or TV ads invite reactions by including a hashtag in the material? Maybe concert tickets should invite users to tweet under the same #justinbieberph to document reactions to the show.

Hashtags are commonly used in the Philippines, but seemingly spur-of-the-moment. During Ondoy people all seemed to come up with their own tags. Can't wait to see which brand or event dictates the tag to unite commenters under one Twitter thread.

(Click for TV Hashtags, Part 2)

a digital learning adventure

On my birthday last year I had just flown into the US to start studies in digital marketing.

New York is a crazy beautiful city and was an awesome backdrop to the learning adventure I started in 2010. The city felt like a long-lost home and was home indeed for the first three-or-so months of my 27th year. 

I had hit a stumbling block in digital and had decided that I wanted to learn the rules from someone else (experts?) before trying to figure out how to break them at work. I headed to New York University to learn from "the best" with a sideline at MRM Worldwide, New York. 

Silly me - there are no real rules. Funny that I had to go all the way to the first, very mature-marketed, world to learn that? But it confirmed that I wasn't the only clueless person in digital marketing. What then? 

I got a happy illumination on a seemingly unconnected trip to the Museum of Natural History. I saw a caption beside their gigantic blue whale that said that, to this day, only 5% of the ocean has ever been explored. It made me happy to imagine that if such a small part of a bounded space has been discovered by man, how much more there is for us to express coming from the limitless space of ideas and creativity.

Coming back after months of art, music, theater, avenues, blocks, burgers, food trucks, footseps, free Wi-Fi, subways, trains, classes, work days and learning that I couldn't even process, I was grounded in the thought that ideas, especially digital ideas, can still break new ground. 

I hit reset on this blog, in how I thought it could help me keep processing this crazy space, and headed home.

thinking time!

Haven't had time to sort out my thoughts and write these things down. But have been meaning to get my thoughts down about:

• Social Network - Filmmaking, like. Story, like! Justin Timberlake, not like!
• Fox as a model for monetization
• The first successful brand viral in the Philippines - Cebu Pacific ftw
• Social networking - As Facebook goes multi-function, other SNS must specialize.
• Group buying follow up!
• My lifestream - personal, social, public spheres
• The ABCs of music management
• Teens have built-in branding & marketing skills

Maybe things will slow down somehow and I'll find time to sort my thoughts out :)