MANILA – October 28, 2013 – The Philippines is about to become the most connected country in the developing world, according to Peter Bithos, Senior Advisor for Consumer Business at Globe Telecom.
“We are in the Philippines by the end of this year the only marketing of developing country in the planet that will have 3G everywhere,” Bithos said in his talk at the third Mobile Marketing Conference, which was held at the Power Plant Mall last October 24 to 25.
“Every Barangay from Tawi-tawi all the way up to Batanes. Think about it. Every last barangay will have wireless broadband access,” he said.
“In fact, when you look globally at the state of the Philippines against any developing market anywhere on the planet, the mobile ecosystem, the wireless ecosystem, the infrastructure that exists to deliver things [here] is the best in the world and getting better. Hard to believe but it’s true,” Bithos said, challenging marketers in the Philippines to take advantage of this and bring mobile and digital marketing to greater heights.
The current scene as Bithos describes it still has much room for growth and improvement, with only three percent of the ad budget in the country going to digital.
“We are very, very tiny,” Bithos said. “And we’re tiny because we have to overcome some key challenges.”
Among those challenges, Bithos said, is that the system in the Philippines is still very fragmented so that brands have to talk to many separate agencies before they can come up with a campaign.
“You’ve got so many different people you need to try and talk to and patch together to try and get a cohesive solution so that my advertising on TV links to my digital advertising, which links to what happens on my smartphone,” Bithos explained.
“This fragmentation that exists in the Philippines, which is not uncommon in other areas, is a very big challenge to overcome, because as a customer, I have to deal with my traditional agency, then I’ve got a digital agency, then I’ve got a marketing agency, and then oh, by the way, I’ve got Google and Facebook coming to me independently and trying to say ‘buy from me, buy from me, buy from me.’ So it’s a bit of a mess, and it’s a bit of a mess because we’re still nascent,” he said.
Bithos said that another challenge is that mobile advertising in the Philippines still lacks creativity, with most people seeing it simply as unimaginative and annoying SMS alerts on their phones.
“This is probably, as a customer, the bone I pick on the most, which is the lack of creativity and innovation in the way that we execute. How many of us are just tired and associate mobile advertising with ‘Get Cash Loan Now, Make 9,000 Pesos’?…It’s a SMS advertisement that doesn’t really have integration or call of action…it’s a banner ad, it’s a paid search,” Bithos said.
“We’ve got to get a lot more creative. And as a customer, I see it. We have so much to learn from other markets that have gone down this path,” he continued.
As examples, Bithos described mobile marketing in the United States and Japan, saying that both countries channel a lot of their ad dollars into digital.
Talking about a Volkswagen ad in Japan, Bithos said, “I will ask you, is that a mobile ad? Is it an outdoor billboard? Is it a poster? What is that? I don’t know. And that’s kind of the point. It’s everything together. And that’s not what we do today in the Philippines, and that’s what we need to do. That’s engaging, that’s different, that’s innovative.”
Bithos said that even with the problems in the mobile marketing industry in the Philippines, there are a lot of factors that work for the country in terms of improving the mobile advertising scene. Aside from having a great wireless ecosystem as mentioned earlier, the Philippines, Bithos said, is also experiencing a fast-growing economy.
“It is now from an access side one of the leading markets in the planet from a developing market standpoint. Everybody knows it’s fast-growing. It’s the fastest-growing country in Asia from the first quarter this year,” Bithos said.
More than that, he also said that the Philippines has a young, connected population that is social-media savvy.
“We love social networking. In many barangays outside of Metro Manila, there is no such thing as internet, there is only Facebooking. It’s a verb. Facebook is an amazing phenomenon globally, but in the Philippines, it’s number one index in the planet,” he said.
“We have a young, socially-connected, fast-growing economy with the best wireless infrastructure of any developing market in the planet,” Bithos said. “If that’s not a fertile ground for innovation and ecosystem development in marketing, I don’t know what is.”
