New Media Philippines

First let me just congratulate the Department of Tourism, led by Secretary Mon Jimenez, for deciding to focus on social media for the tourism campaign. As a digital marketing professional I’m truly thrilled about this! The “It’s More Fun in the Philippines” campaign is groundbreaking, daring, innovative, and it will hopefully showcase what digital has [...]

After 3 years and 7 months, Jonas De Los Reyes, one of the paragons of community management in the Philippines is leaving Yahoo to head a start-up social media monitoring and intelligence company called ThoughtBuzz. The company is currently present in Singapore, Malaysia, and India with plans to expand to the Philippines and Indonesia in [...]

Fundamentals of Social Media Talk at KBP I was invited by the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas (KBP) to give a quick talk and a forum about the basics of social media marketing. Since I’m currently with TV5 (a KBP member), I immediately said yes! It was also a first for me to talk [...]

I log-on to Facebook daily and one of the things that keep popping up on my News Feed is the update that shows what my friends have read on Facebook. Apparently Yahoo is the only site taking advantage of this feature for now since they’re the only ones I see on my stream via this [...]

One of the things I love about my job is the innovation and creativity with the medium. There’s so much you can do to push the limits and that’s something that we tried to do with our new campaign “Nasaan Si Aga“. Mechanics are simple: guess where Aga Mulach is going to for the first [...]

BPO’s aren’t satisfied anymore with offering just the usual contact center services. Convergys, one of the biggest BPO’s in the country, just announced that they will be offering social media services to foreign clients. This is an interesting development and I’m wondering how this will impact the local freelancing scene. Obviously freelancers and agencies that [...]

Globe Telecom launched the T@tt Awards earlier this week to give recognition to individuals that have made it big through social media marketing. Personally I think this is timely considering the huge impact social media has brought about in the country. Filipinos are passionate users of Facebook and Twitter and awards like this put the [...]

According to the latest study by ComScore, the Philippines is the number 1 country in the world when it comes to Facebook Penetration. Before anything let me explain what “Facebook Penetration” means. It’s the total number of Filipino Facebook accounts compared to the total number of Internet Users in the Philippines. Also note that this [...]

Peter Juan shared this video on Facebook. Hilarious stuff. Watch the video first before reading my comments below. I think the biggest problem the marketing industry faces right now when it comes to the world of social media and digital marketing is education. Managers and CEO’s just hire whoever presents to them first without really [...]

People often think that the social media industry isn’t stressful and that it’s all fun because you get to handle social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. It’s completely the opposite. Regardless if you like it or not social networking sites become extensions of customer support because it’s a communication channel between you and your [...]

People have a tendency of saying “everyone on social media says…”. It’s funny because if you really think about it how can one say that indeed everyone is saying one thing? WIthout the proper monitoring and analytics in place everything is just conjecture and you might end up making wrong decisions because you’re misinformed. This [...]

The surge of easy-to-use photo, text, and video editing software and applications gives the phrase “out of context” more relevance and meaning to brands, especially public figures. How many times have we seen demeaning videos, photos, and quotes from celebrities and their primary defense is that the material released to the public was edited? Our [...]

Facebook Questions is a new feature rolled out by Facebook. Users can post a question on their profile and all those who answer in their network will display their answers on their respective networks as well making this a potent recommendation engine. As of today it’s currently not yet activated on all Facebook Official Pages [...]

In 1964 Marshall McLuhan wrote Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. In this piece of work McLuhan coined one of the most well-known media phrases today: “the medium is the message”. This statement basically says that we shouldn’t focus just on the content of the media that we consume but we should seriously look into [...]

The Facebook FBML application is one of the most used tools for brand pages. The ability to turn a specific customizable page as the landing page for users who aren’t fans yet opens a lot of opportunities for businesses push specific marketing messagers to their customers. It’s also a great way to convince non-fans to [...]

How should brands use Foursquare to reach out to more customers? Here’s a good example of a restaurant operating in the Philippines using Foursquare Specials. I went to Pancake House in Bonifacio High Street the other day for a lunch meeting. While waiting for my colleague to arrive for our meeting I decided to check-in [...]

Facebook is currently rolling out a new photo viewer which functions a lot like lightboxes. Once you select a photo from any album the viewer pops up. Other than giving you a bigger photo, the viewer also allows you to tag, rotate, add captions, and comments. There’s also an ad on the lower right hand [...]

A lot of marketers make the mistake of “overselling” in social media. It’s very important to note that the words “engagement” and “community” didn’t become buzz words for no reason. Social media campaigns are always subject to scrutiny by the audience. Let’s face it, no one likes the feeling of being fooled. Customers see through [...]

Remember the so-called Daniel Matsunaga Elevator Scandal? It was later on revealed by the model that it was just a publicity stunt to promote a brand called Veet. Today Adobo Magazine shared in an article what Veet is all about and what the end game is for this entire campaign. So what’s the promo? Participants [...]

Azkals, the Philippines football team, routed Mongolia yesterday in Bacolod 2-0. Phil Younghusband and Chieffy Caligdong scored a goal each to power the team to victory. I’m sure it also helped that we were playing with home court advantage. According to reports a little over 18,000 Filipinos were there to watch. I can’t imagine how [...]