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MANILA – January 6, 2014 – Here are the media highlights of 2013, as listed in the November-December issue of adobo Magazine.
1 – Media Congress – Barely weeks into 2013, the Media Specialists Association of the Philippines (MSAP) put media in all its forms in the spotlight at its first-ever media congress, which doubled up as a launch event for the Advertising Board’s youngest member. Media practitioners were taken into a ‘Brave New World: Embracing the Media Revolution,’ where convergence has become a byword in media strategies. Local and regional media gurus guided practitioners on the journey that MSAP dubbed an eye-opener for strategic media planning.
2 – GroupM Deals – WPP’s media investment arm added to its heft in the Philippines by absorbing Unilever’s long-standing local incumbent Masscom into its Mindshare brand. Struck at the tail end of 2012, when Mindshare retained much of its Asia Pacific brief for Unilever in a global shootout, the deal was consummated early in 2013. GroupM also acquired digital agency Netbooster at about the same time and, in typical fashion, rechristened it with a name beginning with the letter M – Movent.
3 – Star Performer – For the ninth straight year, Starcom MediaVest topped Recma’s leaderboard with billings that were nearly double the runner-up. The year turned even sweeter for CEO Joanna Mojica and her team when the agency scored a hattrick of wins at the LIA’s Agency of the Year, taking the plum Media Agency plate and two other coveted prizes. In a nod to the office’s sizzling performance, the network brought its Global Product Committee meeting to Manila for the first time in late October.
4 – Election Splurge – Despite stringent spending caps, the mid-term elections provided record revenues for media owners, especially broadcasters. Using so-called "advocacy ads," candidates embraced sundry causes, which were self-promotion in disguise, allowing them to communicate with the electorate before the official jockeying period began. Going by broadcasters’ official rate cards, these pre-campaign ads would have had a total value of 892 million pesos. ABS-CBN was a major recipient of the pre-campaign spending boom, booking a 68 percent spike in revenue to 508 million pesos for the first quarter.
5 – Media MVP – Continuing the convergence strategy mapped out for his telecoms and media empires, business tycoon Manny Pangilinan shifted the head of PLDT’s Individual Business unit, Noel Lorenzana, to lead the media investment arm MediaQuest, which includes the third-ranked TV5 and pay-TV operator Cignal TV. The consumer goods and telco market had to hit the ground running since TV5 has been bleeding red ink despite hefty investments in talent and programming. The year also saw MediaQuest extend its reach in print, snapping up a majority stake in BusinessWorld and an eye to doing the same with the Philippine Star.
6 – Not so fast – Within days of the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) signing an Outdoor Magna Carta with various outdoor groups, the Outdoor Media Advocacy Group made it clear it opposed new guidelines for the medium. Chief among its concerns were the lack of opportunity to discuss the guidelines and whether MMDA would have the power to enforce the rules in Metro Manila, where local governments have their own ordinances in place that are in some instances at odds with MMDA’s. In a separate move, another government agency has vowed to strip wrap-around ads off public utility vehicles since these have been used to conceal busted parts of vehicles.
7 – Top of the Heap – Television is still king in the Philippines even as smartphones and tablets have turned media into a mobile experience. Nielsen data point to a staggering 97 percent had "watched TV yesterday," making it the most accessed medium. Advertisers agree, plowing more funds into the medium – 18 percent more in the first half of this year, based on ratecard values, over the same period last year.
8 – Print’s new chapter – The country’s two leading broadsheets have made it clear that print has a future in the 21st century so long as digital is a big part of it. To this end, Philippine Star and Philippine Daily Inquirer launched augmented reality apps – Live It and INQSnap respectively – using digital to bring print pages to glorious life. The apps add a new dimension to the newspaper experience, significantly extending content beyond the confines of the printed page to offer digital content in the form of audio files, video clips such as TV-style news reports, photo galleries, movie trailers, and the like. Both have reported strong advertiser demand for their new services.
9 – Business everyday – BusinessMirror became the world’s first business title to publish sevens days a week, bucking the global trend of newspapers cutting back staff and pages. The country’s leading business newspaper began publishing its weekend editions on October 19, and also launched a mobile app to reach out to a younger audience who take their news mobile.
10 – Reality check – Elsewhere in the world, the year has been more doom than just gloom for print. In the US, newspapers are expected to lose US$1bn in advertising reeve. Other troubling signs include Reader’s Digest parent company filing for bankruptcy protection, its second in four years, Time Warner hiving off its struggling magazine division, which includes the storied TIme magazine, effectively removing the Time portion in the parent company’s name. Then came the news that the 125-year-old International Herald Tribune is no more since the New York Times rechristened it the International New York Times in October, a decade after becoming the newspaper’s sole owner.
