MANILA – October 10, 2013 – For the first time, Starcom MediaVest’s Global Product Committee Meeting will be held in Manila.
Apart from the fact that many committee members had never been to the Philippine capital, the decision to hold the meeting in Manila came after a recent award win by Unilab.
"The local office is so strong and has done so well and we really wanted to acknowledge that and to reward that success with acknowledgement from our global leaders," John Sintras, chairman of Starcom MediaVest Australia and the Global Product Committee, told adobo in a Skype interview.
Representing all the regions where Starcom MediaVest is based, the GPC’s role is to recognize and benchmark great work and to reward and realize the potential of the great work.
According to Sintras, two of the Philippines’ entries to SMV’s global product process were selected as finalists. "Even to be selected as a finalist in our process is incredible because thousands of entries are submitted by the network. So that’s an extraordinary achievement," he said, adding that what the local team must now focus on now is how they can stand out more on the global platform.
The summit is held twice a year, with different regions taking turns to host the meet, during which senior management members judge the company’s internal awards, as well as participate in cultural immersion.
"We are looking forward to getting to know Manila. We always take time to experience the local culture and get to know the local team, so that’s definitely an important part of the agenda," said Sintras, adding that many of the committee members will be running a day of training for the local management team.
Also on the agenda is planning for the global conference in Dubai in February, and working on the company’s product pipeline, which Sintras said is a "more rigorous approach to the work that we have in our system."
Technology at the core
Sintras shared that by continuing to look at what they call great products, the Global Product committee has been able to identify some staple ingredients. "We are no longer creating great experiences that don’t have technology at the core, whether it’s social, mobile, or digital," he said, adding that real-time data helps to optimise the experience.
Not only does technology influence how the work is created, but it also influences the way the work is shared.
"Our most awarded was a fantastic campaign out of Puerto Rico," Sintras said. The campaign "FOLLOW2UNFOLLOW" gave Twitter access to three inmates in prison for them to share how miserable daily life in prison actually is, in order to discourage Puerto Rican youth from criminal behavior.
"If you think about it, that couldn’t have been implemented a few years ago before there was Twitter, before there was enough penetration of Twitter," Sintras said.
According to him, the committee is continuing to see work that goes beyond the technical and traditional approaches.
"We’re continuing to see obviously a lot more creativity in storytelling… we’re starting to see the human understanding, the human inspiration for those campaigns," Sintras said.
