Winding timeline of Nic Gabunada's seven career stages from chemistry to advertising and reputation management

The Serendipitous Career: Why a Non-Linear Career Path Wins

August 27, 2026

Key Takeways: I enrolled in BS Chemistry; two professors talked me into Management Engineering — the first serendipitous turn of many From activist detention in Davao to economics at CRC to Media Pulse to ABS-CBN: none of it was planned When Freddie Garcia handed me Sales and Marketing with no sales background, mentorship made ‘yes’ posible Non-linear career are failure of planning — they’re evidence of adaptability The market rewards specialists, but it deeply needs sympathizers who transfer knowledge across fields I wanted to be a chemist. That’s the truth. When I enrolled at Ateneo de Davao University, I signed up for BS Chemistry. I had a plan. I had a direction. And then the plan changed — the first turn in what became

An aerial night photograph of a massive Duterte campaign rally crowd filling a public square, captioned "Attend Rallies."

Arouse, Organize, Mobilize: Turning Online Followers into Voters and Campaigners

August 25, 2026

Series: Inside the Campaign Sixth of 10 Parts Key Takeaways Engagement metrics are not the same as real-world impact — this distinction cost other campaigns dearly We used a three-stage framework: Arouse (emotion), Organize (structure), Mobilize (action) Online groups were aligned into four clusters: OFWs, Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao — each with a coordinator Mobilization meant rallies, door-to-door, debate watch parties, and ballot guardianship The lesson: social media is the recruitment channel, not the campaign itself There is a trap in social media campaigning that I’ve seen consume well-resourced campaigns with sophisticated tools and impressive metrics: the trap of confusing engagement with action. Likes are not votes. Shares are not door-to-door visits. Passionate comment threads are not guardians of the ballot. And a Facebook group

A volunteer-made campaign collage titled "Unity Leads to Victory" showing eight aerial and crowd photos of Duterte rallies in Taguig, Tabaco, Tagum, Danao, Luneta, Cotabato, and Lingayen, bordered with the Duterte-Cayetano campaign banner.

Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom: Why Consumer-Generated Content Beats Agency-Invented Campaigns

August 18, 2026

Series: Inside the Campaign Fifth of 10 Parts Key Takeaways Our best campaign content came from volunteers, not professionals Digital natives from each region created content that was believed because it was true Our central role was direction-setter and curator — not creator The result was a content ecosystem that felt alive, because it was The lesson: find your believers, give them a direction not a script, then get out of the way There is a fantasy that persists in the marketing and communications industry — that the best content comes from the best creative teams. That a campaign is only as good as the agency behind it. The 2016 Duterte campaign was, among other things, a refutation of that idea. We didn’t have the

Dark editorial graphic with an FM frequency scale across the top and an orange tuning needle sweeping diagonally from bottom left to top right. The needle rises from a jagged analog waveform into a blocky digital waveform that resolves into three icons: a play button, podcast waveform bars, and a video camera. Headline text reads "The radio star is now a multi-screen anchor," with the subhead "From the dashboard to the dial, the feed, and the scroll."

The Radio Star is Now a Multi-Screen Anchor: Revisiting the State of Radio a Decade Later

August 13, 2026

When I looked back at the speech I delivered more than a decade ago about radio living and breathing in a new digital world, I noted that radio was holding its ground against smartphones, streaming, and social media. Reflecting on the state of radio in the Philippines, my core argument was simple: radio survives because it provides unmatched human connection and practicality. It is now a multi-screen anchor. Looking at the industry landscape today, that reality has undergone a massive, volatile acceleration. The “double life” I once described — where audiences split their time between offline and online environments — has fused entirely. Traditional over-the-air listening has faced steep declines, but the essence of the medium has mutated into something entirely new. If radio was

A hand-drawn red, yellow, and blue sketch portrait of Rodrigo Duterte beside the handwritten campaign slogan "Bisaya napud!" — it's the Bisaya's turn.

Exploiting Regional Identity in National Campaigns: The Bisaya Na Pud Movement

August 11, 2026

Series: Inside the Campaign Fourth of Ten Parts Reading time: 7 min read Key Takeaways The Philippines is not one market — treating it as one is a strategic failure For nearly six decades, the country had no Bisaya president. We named that gap and turned it into fuel Our geographic plan: fortify Mindanao, consolidate the Bisaya base, penetrate Metro Manila Identity claims mobilize people in ways policy arguments rarely can Social media makes regional precision possible at national scale — use it One of the enduring mistakes of national campaigns in the Philippines is treating the country as a single, homogeneous market. It is not. Anyone who has spent time outside Imperial Manila knows this. The issues that keep a voter awake in Cotabato

When Politics Is More Profitable Than Industry

August 8, 2026

“No country can progress if its politics is more profitable than its industries. In a country where those in government are richer than entrepreneurs, they manufacture poverty.” — Peter Obi, Nigerian politician I came across that line last year. It has not left me since. We are a long way from Nigeria. Yet Obi could just as easily have been describing us. When politics is more profitable than industry, the damage does not stay inside the halls of government. It reaches the barangay. It reaches the dinner table. And lately, it reaches the roofline of houses that flood every rainy season. The Water Keeps Rising, and So Do the Questions Since the flood control mess broke open, the typhoons have kept coming. The floods have

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

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