Research Is Not Optional: Every Media and Marketing Decision Needs Data

August 6, 2026

Key Takeaways: You cannot craft an effective message if you don’t know who you’re talking to — yet gut feel decisions remain rampant Helping set up the Philippines’ first TV people meter changed how the industry planned and bought media At ABS-CBN, research informed programming, expansion, and the groundworks for Studio 23, Sky Cable, Star Cinema and more Research done well is not a support function — it’s a strategic weapon But the best practitioners are data-informed, not data paralyzed: research reduces uncertainty, it doesn’t replace judgment I’m going to say something that might sound obvious. But I’ve seen enough campaigns crash and burn to know it’s not practiced nearly enough: you cannot craft an effective message if you don’t know who you’re talking

How We Framed the Field: The Art and Science of Political Positioning in a Crowded Race

August 4, 2026

Series: Inside the Campaign Third of 10 Parts Key Takeaways In a crowded race, your most powerful move is positioning your competitors — not just yourself We anchored our frame in real voter emotions: fear, frustration, and exhaustion with the status quo The question wasn’t “Who is Duterte?” — it was “What kind of future do you want?” Every competitor’s position was grounded in publicly known facts, not manufactured attacks The lesson: find the emotional terrain voters already stand on, then give it language When I joined the Duterte campaign in early 2015, our candidate was — by any objective measure — a long shot. He was a regional mayor from Davao with low awareness levels in Luzon and the Visayas, no national political machinery,

Roadmap or Mask? Reading the Senate’s Empty Seats at SONA 2026

July 31, 2026

I have spent a good part of my professional life in political communication — crafting messages, reading audiences, and studying how moments like last Monday’s are built. So let me say this upfront, because critics who refuse to concede anything convince no one: the fifth SONA was, in places, genuinely well-crafted political communication. The question that matters is whether craft is the same thing as governance. It is not, and the evidence was sitting — or rather, not sitting — right there in the session hall. Start with the room, not the speech Before a single word was delivered, the Batasang Pambansa had already given its own address — though not the one the wide shots suggested. The hall itself was full, even festive: hundreds

A split-screen digital illustration contrasting news consumption in Metro Manila between 1988 and 2026. The left side depicts a bustling 1980s street scene with traditional jeepneys and a newsstand labeled "BUSINESSWORLD," where crowds of people are actively reading, buying, and sharing physical newspapers. The right side shows the interior of a modern MRT-3 train car in 2026, where every commuter is looking down, completely absorbed in their smartphones and tablets. Text callouts throughout the image display media statistics from both eras.

From Print Boom to Digital Shift: My 1988 Reflections vs. The Reality of 2026

July 30, 2026

One of the most significant changes I’ve witnessed is the effect of declining newspaper readership over the decades. Looking back at the column I wrote for BusinessWorld in 1988, titled “Declining newspaper readership in Metro Manila,” I am struck by how equivocal I was at the time about a trend that, in hindsight, was the first tremor of a seismic shift in media consumption. I didn’t sound an alarm back then—I explicitly asked whether the decline meant the market was shrinking, and answered myself: “Not necessarily.” At the time, my analysis was grounded in fresh data from our Pulse Research Group’s Media Profile study. We were tracking an extraordinary post-EDSA Revolution press boom. In 1985, our tables listed just 13 mainstream newspapers. By 1988, that

Authenticity as the Most Powerful Campaign Strategy: Lessons from Duterte’s “As-Is, Where-Is” Approach

July 28, 2026

Series: Inside the Campaign Second of 10 Parts Key Takeaways Duterte told us directly: don’t package me differently from who I am We presented both sides of the candidate — unflinchingly — and let voters decide Research confirmed: authenticity was the #1 thing voters liked about him Manufactured relatability fails — voters have finely tuned authenticity detectors The lesson: authenticity is a strategic commitment, not a communications style There is a standard playbook in political communications. You take the candidate. You identify their strongest qualities. You amplify those. You sand down the rough edges. You package them into something the broadest possible audience can accept. We threw that playbook out from day one. Not because we were contrarian. Not because we were underfunded —

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,

Illustration of a chessboard cleared of toppled pieces, with a single crowned king left standing under a spotlight and held up by puppet strings; headline reads "The Illusion of Justice — Philippine Charter Change 2026."

The Illusion of Justice: Why the 2026 Political Spectacle is a Trap for Philippine Democracy

July 16, 2026

The Bread and Circuses of the Present Right now, the Filipino public is being treated to the ultimate political bloodsport. In one corner of the world, a former president sits in an ICC detention facility in The Hague. Closer to home, a sitting Vice President is undergoing a grueling Senate impeachment trial that completely monopolizes every headline, tweet, and broadcast. To the casual observer, it looks like a long-overdue reckoning—the wheels of justice finally grinding down an empire. But we must look past the theater. While accountability for past or present misdeeds is necessary, we are blind if we do not see that the real story of 2026 is not the trials at all—it is Philippine Charter Change 2026, the quiet effort to use this

The Trial Isn’t About the Money

July 14, 2026

I wrote a piece a while back about why the Pink and Yellow factions appear to be propping up an administration they spent years opposing. Moral decoupling, I called it — the cold discipline of separating a player’s flaws from their usefulness and running the two ledgers separately. Readers liked it. A few asked the obvious follow-up question, the one I’d ask if I were still in the room: fine, but what would you tell the other side? So let’s do that. Let’s sit in the other war room for a minute — the one defending Vice President Sara Duterte as her second impeachment trial opened last week — and read the same board from that chair. I’ll say this up front: neither the Vice

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