From Activist to Adman — How the Anti-Marcos Movement Made Me a Better Marketer

July 23, 2026

Key Takeaways: Some of the most valuable marketing training happens outside marketing –mine happened in the anti Marcos movement Every flyer and every rally had to land: that was audience segmentation before anyone called it that Distribution mattered as much as content — trusted networks were our channels The goal was never just to inform but to mobilize; that’s virality by another name Look behind history’s movements and you’ll find someone who understood audience, message and reach People are sometimes surprised when I tell them where I got my most valuable marketing lessons. It wasn’t a classroom. It wasn’t a boardroom. It was the Anti-Marcos movement — in the streets, in secret meetings, in the business of moving people when the stakes were life and

Why Social Media Was the Real Tipping Point of the 2016 Philippine Elections

July 21, 2026

Series: Inside the Campaign First of 10 Parts Key Takeaways: Social media in 2016 was no longer a youth or elite medium — it reached every corner of the Philippines With 42 million active social media users and free Facebook from telcos, the platform was effectively free for millions We spent a fraction of what our competitors did on traditional media — and won Social media scales both authentic messages and disinformation equally — discipline is non-negotiable For strategists: stop treating social as supplementary. In many campaigns, it IS the campaign. For years, the conventional wisdom in Philippine politics was simple: if you want to win, you dominate television. TV was king. Radio was queen. Everything else was a footnote. The 2016 presidential elections changed

Inside the Campaign: 10 Lessons from the 2016 Duterte Digital Playbook

July 21, 2026

A 10 Blog Series for Marketers, PR Professionals & Digital Strategists ABOUT THIS SERIES This is Inside the Campaign — a 10-part series drawn from my direct experience in the Communications Group of then-candidate Rodrigo Roa Duterte during the 2016 Philippine presidential elections. My role covered TV and radio strategy and the overall management of the campaign’s social media effort. What I witnessed — and what we built — permanently changed how I think about media, messaging, and movements. These posts are written for marketers, PR professionals, political scientists, and digital strategists. The lessons are not confined to politics. Every principle we applied in 2016 maps directly onto the challenges facing communicators and brand builders today. The schedule: The series launches Tuesday, July 21, 2026,

Journal

From Activist to Adman — How the Anti-Marcos Movement Made Me a Better Marketer

Why Social Media Was the Real Tipping Point of the 2016 Philippine Elections

Inside the Campaign: 10 Lessons from the 2016 Duterte Digital Playbook