And it's been another while.. Jingles

Yup, I said I'd write soon about jingles in my last post but, man it took me a while. Stupid special projects at work. anyhoo here we go.

The jingle, in essence a jingle is supposed to characterize a brand,  put a feeling to what the brand is representing, a feeling of using or being associated with the brand. Oh yeah, it's supposed to be very effective in the Philippines as we are a music oriented nation, e.g. extrim magic sing. But unfortunately, companies not knowing better are using jingles in the most horrid of ways. The good first before I put anyone down. I like what Petron is doing with their everyone's Petron lahat kasama bit, it makes you feel good in a acertain way. I don't know it's the tune or the execution but it does work. It makes you feel like you're part of a community. Next on the praise list is the Close-up TV ad, it effectively uses music in the form of whistling to create a strong musical impression on a viewer or listener, it is immediately recognizable and adds a cheery and bright character to the product and brand. On the border is the C2 Radio ad, with something health something tomorrow and good and happy and I don't quite remember the jingle. This just goes to show how forgettable the thing is. Lame.

On the shittier side of things, there's another forgettable but more sloppily executed jingle I heard of a whitening product, that advertises pantay ang puti or even whitening, man was that raw and ugly. It's chorus just shoots and shoots pantay ang puti, how pragmatic, something you cant communicate through song sad to say.

Next on the list... I'm really hating on cafe france the brand and everything about it. it reeks of cheap. and with a radio ad singing about seeing you at "CF" who the hell gave you that abbreviation. You need to earn that dumbass. Not to mention the melody and tone is lifted right out of a Colbie Calliet
song. Great work guys, almost as good at the guys at Audi ripping the Eminem Song right out for their A6 Avant ad. Slow clap. It's not copyright infringement as long as there's no dude rapping about an aspiring rap artist joining a competition. But going back, man I hate that CF advertising crap, yeah sure pay radio DJ's to talk about it but it still doesn't take the lame and crappy our of your advertising campaign. whoever the company behind this is, you should reconsider you ad agency, cause they suck, bigtime. buti pa yung whitening product, baka inexperienced yung team, but shit no excuses on your side of the barn, mukhang mataastaas naman ang budget ninyo.

Yes, see you at CF... the consumer insight behind it is... wait for it... people meet people in coffee shops. whoa better than that, you see people at coffee shops. Way to go Cafe France, now you've made it clear you don't have any of the sophistication and quirkiness of a Parisian cafe. Ugh. Crappy campaign. Kawawa naman si Deli france, that's what you get for a 100 million peso deal, stupid advertising. a far cry front their roast beef with gravy sandwich commercials where the girl eats the guys sandwich. huff.

it's been a while - PLDT mother's day billboard

It's been a while since I've been able to post. It's been a busy couple of months at work, a motorshow, a string of business trips to Monte Carlo, Geneva, Shanghai and Munich. Seeing advertising in other countries makes me a bit sad about what we have here, I didn't place so much attention in grabbing ads from other countires but a particularly nice one with Mercedes Benz and the new CLS was placed in London Heathrow.

But at least a good one popped up this mothers day with PLDT's ad focusing on how close you were with your mom before. A well played visual accompanied by very good copy.

(you were this close before. hopefully it still remains the same this mother's day.)


On a far off note, C2's radio jingle is friggin' annoying, why does every body keep on using jingles in this damn country? I'll make it a point to keep an ear out for jingles this week and blast them on my next post. ughh.

San Miguel Beer - the highs and the lows

I remember a few years age when San Miguel Corp. launched their San mig light beer. it kicked off with Ding Dong Dantes and Marian Rivera in a series TVC where they seem to have some tension between them. This followed through with their regular SMB parties and ever widening scope of oktoberfest (4 months?) activities has made them the most bullet proof entity in straw gold pale pilsner.

Enter Manila beer with their strong push for below the line marketing through events and sales drives through the usual metro haunts. Well their beer still sucks, but the light (green label) one is a tad on the decent drinkable side, still experienced an uptick in sales penetration.

San Miguel on the other hand came out with a strong campaign for their core product the Pale Pilsen as it seemed to be going out of fashion, hence they nominated brand ambassadors such as Micheal V, Efren Reyes, Derek Ramsey and Manny Paquiao. This along with the catchy san miguel pale pilsen time na! jingle gave them a slight edge up on the dwindling negative image of the old school beer in a brown fat bottle (for the dads). Which in my opinion is their only decent beer, light tastes like grass, cerveza negra too sweet, and the premium targeted towards idiots tastes like piss. Then comes the Bi-polar San mig light follow up, highs and lows.


It kicked of with a decent radio ad with two guys from a barkada (group of friends) argue about the most nonsensical things light calories and playing around with the tagalog word for why (Baket?) with bucket. It might seem offbeat but it really got people's attention. The Pale pilsen series I discussed above comes next, followed by SMB light's downfall.

They come up with an updated version of the two guys bantering on silly things.. except this time the jokes are too obvious , too redundant, too lame. It didn't have the charm and feel of the first radio ads making it a desperate try to cling on what worked before... hello this is a few years later, things change, people get tired of the same crap. Here comes the new even weirder part, they got an endorser.. that they try to integrate into the ad. wtf.

Sam Pinto is a cute girl, they picked her to be the face of San Mig Light, but to the ad industry's tears, they epically fail in doing so. They relate the beer to sam, to sam, sam, and order another bucket of sam. How can relate to this? If i'm past teeny bopper age, i wouldn't know sam pinto. And frankly with this radio ad I can care less. goes the same way with the ponds commercial ad, if you have to say the endorsers name, then you shouldn't have done it on radio, tv would have been a smarter choice.

This goes in a vibrant contrast with their new addition to the San Miguel Pale Pilsen crew, Bossing Vic Sotto.

They teased it on facebook with a photo of him having fun with the "guys" of the first iteration, with his back to the camera. They did this one on the radio as well, and without a name, damn that's Vic Sotto, instant recognition, what radio ad endorsers should be. Jeez, who the F is handling the San Mig Light account should drink more beer, and maybe they'd get better ideas.

follow up - ponds radio commercial - Carla Abellana

long time no post. I've been busy... and umm lazy for the past month or so.

After paying much kudos to the sleazy talent from the last pond's ads, it's time to shoot them down again.

Their latest running radio ad featuring local celebrity Carla Abellana talks about having no take two's when you whitening cream spills all over your bag. it's a pretty much straight endorsement with a cheesy toot toot cellphone tone, where she then asks for a take two for the commercial. come on, anything better than that. And the simple fact that you say the full name of the endorser in the radio ad means their not relevant at all and are not recognizable through the sound of their voice (more on this on the next post) "This is Carla Abellana" it just sounds like a fine waste of airtime, but the stations are making money from it though.  Waste of money Unilever.

Pond's facial cleanser and detox cream

Pretty decent and running on the radio waves. It starts out with a sleazy male VO personifying a bar of normal bathroom soap in one and a pimple scar in another. It works very well as the talent chosen to voice really makes the sleaze come out, you could already picture what the guy looks like until the turn of the radio ad revealing the product advantage of the Pond's products. Something fresh versus the normal slew of jingles and overly informative ads.

Coke TV and Radio Ads

Coke already has a slew of good and clean ads to its name, very carefully studying the core of the brand and relaying what coke stands for in the lives of people. In their most recent television Ad featuring Moymoy palaboy, the brrrr tvc takes on a slightly different angle on Coke. Albeit the focus on energizing refreshment seems to be off from Coke's regular sling on authenticity or the real thing, the TVC has good presence and entertainment value. The younger characters of the ad seem to be a bit more fit with a Pepsi ad, but who cares as they've been an absentee for the longest time on above the line channels. Moving from very mellow TVC's with Nikki Gil, Santa Claus and the Bottle and Bottle cap gang, Coke works to grow as a brand. This aggressive advance on the youth market, tries to slam the proverbial stake into Pepsi's claim for the younger market or next generation. And choosing a brand ambassador such as Moymoy Palaboy who's youtube antics characterize today's internet centric lifestyle has made Coke an undeniable part of the Philippine lifestyle.

But wait, there's also the crappy radio ad that follows their win on the boob tube. Its a jingle that comes on as somethign that's pretty difficult to understand. It took me a few times listening to this gibberish before i realized there's the open happiness lines and open cocacola in the lines. A big mistake to not clearly delineate what brand they are promoting. At first I was thinking if the ad was for a construction firm or insurance company, the usual in-house ads that have too much to say and sound like they were recorded in company's pantry. And for heck's sake, can they make it less obvious that the melody was ripped out of Katy Perry's California Girls? Fail.

Fashion brands and billboards

Its a full onslaught of the different clothing brands on EDSA as you pass through the omnibus area of guadalupe bridge. F&H here, Bench there, Bayo here, Kashieca there, Penshoppe here, and way over at the end near 'm roxas... there's Crissa haha, no that's not part of the post well not part of the complaint actually. They are all starting to look the same, luxe this, mr. designer that, but everything seems to be simply clothes on a celebrity posing, that's it. It would be nice to see those things in fashion magazines in a photo set with different backdrops and styling but for a billboard it just all seems too familiar and boring. Anne Curtis' partyphile board is a bit on top of the clutter simply because she's not looking into the camera and there is some emotion in the composition of the photo. but for adult fashion brand, the problem persists that they seem to forget what their brand is about, or in any case there wasn't any core values to start with for their brand, merely bringing new designs to the market. All these guys want to evoke cool, power, beauty and glamor but only a few achieve this, more so distinction and character. Take for example well composed shots from Lacoste, the feeling is almost calibrated. The look is clean and fresh, even for their winter and autumn collections. Payless also evokes a strong look and feel to it's billboards, with a sexy and confident woman taking a long stride through the material. Premium brand Louis Vuitton, goes a step further by placing the subjects in a exotic locale with their luggage, creating a sense of adventure and an avenue for emotion, more than making sure Bono looks good in his duds.

Needless to say, Philippine Fashion billboards still have a long way to go, but before tinkering with the elements of the ad they should really first take a look into who their brand is. Most of them simply place model after model and forget to communicate their core character. That's the reason why they all seem to look like the same ad material but with different people wearing different clothes.

I think only Bench has succeded with creating a distinct look and feel for their every brand. Kamiseta has a weathered and laid back look to their ads which show good sense of who their brand is, but I still can figure why it was shifted from the Cojuanco sisters, Alica Silverstone, to Natalie Portman to Kate Hudson then to Petra Nemcova and Natalia Vodianova. Odd shift from Hollywood to the Runwaywood. I know endorsers are effective in the PH market, but strangely, knowing your brand seems to be out of fashion.

Mabuhay Miles Credit Card - a short note on billboards

There's one in C5 and another one in NLEX. The billboard of Mabuhay Miles fails to realize that people will be driving by their ad and wont ahve any time to stop or slowdown to read the fine print, and a lot of fine print there is. As a hard and fast rule, billboards should be very graphic heavy and communicate through layout and color, too many elements will only serve to clutter what you really want to say. More so if the additional clutter is in the form of words or sentences. Keep billboards concise, leave the details for print and the net.

Zest Air Radio Ad

I have just heard Zest Air's new radio commercial featuring a jingle... theme song which I'm guessing should embody their brand personality. As a traveler who has flown on Sea Air and Cebu Pacific, this ad does nothing to shed any light on the Asian Spirit franchise. With lines such as "Zest in the Air", no talk on quality of services and a slew of motherly statements that all rhyme with each other just reinforces that this is a juice brand behind everything. The cheesy melody and nonsensical dr. seussery just made a strong dent in my head telling me not to trust such a brand. Airlines are a serious matter, selling it means you're selling trust of life and limb, and you just can't communicate that through a song and dance number. It starts with good fares and fierce customer service or customer savings. Cebu Pacific started out with their Piso fares, while Sea Air took a bite out of the Boracay market by offering the fastest flights from Manila (using their initial disadvantage of propeller planes which enable them to land in Caticlan as a positive). Zest Air coming from a brand that was tagged with a not so safe image, should have put more thought into it. The tag line also doesn't help, most refreshing airline? why because you're owned by a juice brand and Zesto is served? come on guys, work on the brand a little more. Zest-O works for juice because there is Zest in juice. Money wasted, change your ad agency.

Tide TV Ads

Boss Vic is really a good pick for an endorser. In Tide's flurry of TV ads covering, nasty socks, fishy t-shirts and most recently a basketball teams worth of clothes to wash, there is more to their method than a strong endorser.
If you notice endorser usage by most companies, they usually just create a spiel for the endorser and make him or her the focus of the full ad. This is a polar opposite of testimony ads where users swear by a product in a studio or home environment. JOY dish washing liquid makes a good play on this one using Micheal V as a disguised spokesperson and gets the usage experience of actual users.And finally, the use of non-celebrity talents in TV ads such as the surf series of ads.
Going back to Tide, it creates a new and seemingly effective middle ground in using a strong endorser such as Vic Sotto, and combines him in a portrait of everyday life. The difference now lies in how non-testimonial, scripted lines are provided to the non-celebrity talents who share an equally lengthy limelight with the main celebrity. As with their usage in stage plays, foil characters are also an effective medium in setting the stage for the main character, and often times prove to be more important than the lead in building and delivering a message. Kudos to the guys working with P&G for this ad. It's a breath of fresh air in a TVscape of heavy and plain endorsements by high-caliber celebrities.

HP ink advantage system

From what I've seen and heard, this is a radio and in-store campaign. The store banderitas and balloon arcs are eye catching and supplemented with an eye pleasing display of their inks on the shelves helps a lot to really make their presence felt. On the radio side, this is where the push comes to shove. It starts out good with a clear message, clean VO and cute but attention grabbing cut to emphasize the cost cutting efficiency of these ink systems. Then comes the corporate guys, hard sell and crude wanting to plug in all the additional details about the ink, where its available, suking tindahan stuff. Cut the ad cost in half my ass, the ending spiel defeated itself by providing too much information, and making the ad longer than it should be. Changing the system changes everything sounds good, but they should have left the details with the sales guys doing the activation on the store side. sheesh.