Tag: GIGIL

Manila, Philippines – With the news that the Michelin Guide is expanding its reach to review restaurants in the Philippines, many restaurants–especially in the target places of Metro Manila and its Environs, as well as Cebu–are now vying to get the coveted Michelin Star recognition, which has been used commonly as a symbol of high quality-cooking.

Amidst all of this, Chinese hotpot brand Jiang Nan, like any other restaurant, also aspired to achieve the elusive and prestigious Michelin stars, but they won the race through wit and humor. 

In their latest campaign, the Chinese hotpot restaurant found Michelle Lyn Espiritu, a Filipina with a name that rings just like that of the expert food critic organization’s. She ate at the restaurant, and gave her judgment on Google reviews: 5 stars.

Said campaign is done alongside Katok, the social media agency of GIGIL.

Following this, Jiang Nan announced this ‘recognition’ on Meta which created buzz online. From avid fans of the restaurant to people scrolling and having a good laugh, and even to heavily followed pages, the stars used as a joke skyrocketed Jiang Nan’s traction. 

Over the weekend alone when it was posted, the post organically garnered millions of views with zero media budget. 

Philippines – Antibacterial soap brand Defensil is spotlighting evolved germs in its latest campaign with advertising agency GIGIL. 

Ditching the prevalent concept of scary germs, the campaign’s ‘Germ Zs’ are taking over to urge Filipinos to change their soap. In lieu of frequently used fear-based tactics in soap commercials, Defensil and GIGIL have opted for a humorous strategy.

In a series of comedic films, the campaign portrays germs as having evolved to act like Gen Zs, stylish, tech-savvy, and having similar lingo and interests like dating and travelling.

While it incorporates humour, Defensil’s campaign is based on the scientific reality that germs are constantly evolving, suggesting that legacy soaps may no longer be effective against germs today.GIGIL has released multiple humorous campaigns in the past.

Recently, the agency’s OOH campaign with Skyro went viral on social media, with ‘Flexi-Billboards’ complementing Skyro’s offer of flexible loans.

Philippines – Finance company Skyro’s Flexi-Billboards were first installed in a Philippine province, meant primarily to be seen by people in Davao. Yet it soon captured the eyes of Filipinos nationwide over social media.

The billboards, as seen in a viral post on social media, appear flexible as they adjust around physical barriers such as electrical poles. This concept of advertising agency GIGIL complements Skyro’s offer of flexible loans, showing a witty side of the brand.

In an exclusive interview with MARKETECH APAC, Alvin Adriano, GIGIL’s new associate creative director, talks about how the creative billboards sprung from a simple concept and propelled Skyro’s message to unexpectedly more audiences. 

Resonating with audiences through clever yet simple execution

Big ideas can also be simple, as GIGIL and Skyro have proven in their collaboration. Alvin says simplicity has been at the core of developing the out-of-home (OOH) ads, from the brainstorming sessions to its execution.

“It all started with a strong foundational idea. The team developed the campaign tagline ‘Kami na mag-a-adjust’ or ‘We’ll adjust’, which is based on the brand benefit of Skyro Flexi Loans’ due dates and payment terms being adjustable. This provided us with multiple avenues to explore and play with,” Alvin said.

Building on the idea, Alvin shares how his team used Skyro’s intended message of being flexible in setting due dates as a springboard for its visuals.

“During brainstorming sessions, the team’s thought process was, ‘What are the day-to-day things we see in our surroundings that Skyro can adjust?’ From there, the team came up with multiple ideas and eventually narrowed it down to obstructions blocking billboards, a common occurrence in dense metro areas in the Philippines,” he explained.

The simple yet clever idea also proved to be an advantage in ensuring that Skyro’s target audience would seamlessly get the message.

“From the copy to the layout of the billboard, the team ensured it would be easily read and understood, removing any layers that could make our message confusing or difficult to comprehend,” he said.

Enhancing Skyro’s brand awareness

The purpose of all OOH campaigns is to reach a large number of audiences, but this number greatly increased for GIGIL and Skyro once the billboards transcended from the physical to the digital realm.

“Shortly after we put up the billboard, it caught the attention of a local Davaoeño, who took a photo of it and shared it on Facebook, where it quickly went viral,” Alvin said.

“Originally targeting Davaoeños, the campaign has now expanded its reach across the country. Now, Filipinos nationwide are aware of Skyro and their adjustable loan offerings,” he added.

However, GIGIL also picked up insights to improve on in the next campaign, based on the audiences’ response to viral social media posts.

“The team also learned that there are still Filipinos who are hesitant to avail themselves of a loan despite Skyro’s compelling and flexible offerings. The stigma surrounding loans could be something the brand can address in the next campaign,” he said.

In concluding the interview, Alvin leaves a message to other creatives in the industry looking to incorporate unique concepts in their ads.

“It’s important for the idea to be entertaining at its core, capturing people’s attention with the aim of having the material resonate with them and hopefully spark positive conversations. Additionally, they should also expose themselves to a variety of ads, using this as an inspiration to craft something truly unique and original—an ad that stands apart from anything that’s been done before,” he said.

With the campaign being able to connect with audiences in a remarkable way, GIGIL and Skyro’s collaboration serves as a reminder for marketers to explore new ways to send marketing messages, demonstrating the art and power of simplicity.

Manila, Philippines – With a humorous twist, Grab Philippines has teamed up with the creative agency Gigil to unveil its latest campaign, highlighting GrabCar’s improved booking reliability—making it no longer a go-to excuse for being late or cancelling plans.

Titled “Sorry, ‘Di Mo Na Kami Pwedeng Gawing Excuse,” the campaign spotlights a series of humorous online videos that poke fun at the absurd excuses people use for being late or skipping plans. From pretending to be attacked by a dog and jokingly breaking the law to dropping their phone in the toilet, these videos emphasise that GrabCar is no longer a convenient excuse for tardiness.

Grab’s campaign highlights the company’s improved driver allocation and more reliable booking experience, leaving passengers with fewer excuses to avoid commitments.

J-anne Aruta, country marketing head of Grab Philippines, said, “Through the intriguing paradox in ‘Sorry, ‘Di Mo Na Kami Pwede Gawing Excuse’, we aim to instill confidence in our passengers that GrabCar is now a more reliable transportation alternative—a safe and convenient way to get back home to their families or reach their intended destination.” 

“We’ve all found ourselves in this situation—crafting the most plausible excuses to avoid commitments or justify delays, sometimes even blaming the unavailability or challenges in securing a ride. However, Grab persistently strives to put an end to this amusing habit of playing the ‘I couldn’t book a ride’ card,” Aruta added. 

In the first half of 2024, GrabCar reported a significant boost in passenger experience, with nine out of ten riders successfully securing a driver. The company attributed this improvement to increased driver-partner activity and the introduction of new features like advance booking, multi-taxi type booking, and group rides, which enhance GrabCar’s reliability.

Manila, Philippines – Independent creative agency GIGIL has released an official statement, apologising in regards to its involvement in the controversial ‘Gil Tulog’ campaign done for the melatonin supplement brand Wellspring.

In a statement, GIGIL said that they recognise the issues caused by their recent campaign, adding that even as all the necessary permits and clearances were secured, their approach had resonated differently and so the campaign was immediately discontinued.

“Understanding the distress the project caused, we have personally reached out to members of the Puyat family to convey our regrets and express our respect for former Senate President Gil Puyat’s legacy,” the agency said.

The agency also added that it will be putting in place more stringent measures to ensure this type of incident does not happen again.

It should be noted that the Advertising Standards Council (ASC) of the Philippines and the Association of Accredited Advertising Agencies – Philippines (4AS Philippines) have released separate statements regarding the campaign, expressing their dismay on the campaign execution and promising a thorough investigation related to the overall execution of the campaign.

The controversial ‘Gil Tulog’ campaign was met with dismay and frustration by the general public, especially the family of the late Senator Gil Puyat–to which the Gil Puyat Avenue was named after and became the subject of the campaign.

Following the incident, Victor Puyat–son of the late Senator–had filed a complaint with the Ad Standards Council and asking that the agency who did the campaign–relatively undisclosed as of this writing–be either ‘suspended or banned’.

However, this was not the first time GIGIL came under fire for its creative work–known to always go the tongue-in-cheek route.

In 2021, 4AS Philippines suspended GIGIL’s membership following the release of its controversial ‘Pandemic Effect’ campaign done alongside the Belo Group. In the campaign, it featured a woman watching a barrage of news while her appearance changes: the skin under her eyes darkens, gets acne, grows facial and body hair, and gains weight. The general public has called out said ad, stating that it was ‘tone deaf’ and body-shamed women in the middle of the pandemic.

Manila, Philippines – GrabFood in the Philippines has recently launched its latest feature ‘GrabFood Group Order’, allowing a group of people to order on their own through a group invite feature and then paying each order on their own without the hassle of calculating their order altogether.

As part of this feature rollout, Grab has tapped creative agency GIGIL to launch a new ad, centred around the dilemma of office mates struggling to do a group order together–with colleagues only relying on one person to take the bulk order–all while making their own requests.

The ad features a quirky meme reference to Kara Mia, a 2019 TV series that featured two-faced twin sisters. For this ad, said meme reference was used to denote that many people who do group order together often have conflicting orders, and more often than not, have way too many specific requests.

MARKETECH APAC recently caught up with GIGIL and Grab Philippines, who have long worked together on both local and international campaigns since 2022.

Cutting through the noise with trust

GIGIL has long been known to always go the quirky route when it comes to doing creative work with their clients. In an exclusive statement, Herbert Hernandez, founding partner at GIGIL stated that while humour still plays a huge role in their campaign, what matters for them is trust being built with clients.

“When GIGIL works on projects, it is always our goal to make clients and their message cut through. And what we have learned is that humor can effectively deliver a message across to an audience. And cut through is only possible if there is great trust and collaboration between the client and the agency,” he told MARKETECH APAC.

In the case of this campaign work, Hernandez notes that the theme is centered around the office being a ‘battleground’ for most Filipino workers, and that they also wanted to represent different personalities with the faces to make the situation more grounded as order-taking experiences in the office.

“Order-taking can become a hassle as it requires the person tasked with doing so to, quite literally, listen to everyone’s voices and take note of their each and every request. This can lead to mismatched orders and mistaken food and drink customizations. We wanted to visualise that problem, humorously but in a way that’s easy to understand. And how better to visualise that than to have a character with multiple faces popping out from different areas of his head?,” he explained.

Hyperlocalisation is at the heart of the campaign

In an exclusive conversation as well with J-anne Aruta, the country marketing head at Grab Philippines, she highlights that for every campaign they do, their primary focus is always on the message and its potential to inspire action among our consumers.

And in the Filipino context, they believe GIGIL is consistent in being an excellent thought and idea partner in the effective delivery of their messages, from relatable, attention-grabbing storytelling to strategic channel identification.

“Having worked with GIGIL for a few years now, we’ve witnessed how they’ve developed a deep understanding of our ecosystem and of our Filipino audiences. This in-depth understanding has allowed us to effectively collaborate on hyperlocal campaigns that are founded on unique, albeit sometimes odd, insights that resonate with our diverse base of consumers,” Aruta stated.

She also added that while Grab is a regional company, they also understand that hyperlocalisation is important to address specific touch points for each local market in the region.

“One of the many factors behind its strong presence across Southeast Asia is hyperlocalisation – a strategy that has empowered us to create solutions that address the various yet specific on-ground challenges our communities face. And hyperlocalisation does not just manifest in the tailor-fitting of products and services we launch across hundreds of cities in SEA. It is also present in the way we communicate with our audiences,” she explained.

When asked about the ad’s humorous direction, Aruta said that humour is but the wrapper, adding that it’s the ‘why’ that is the actual chocolate – the message a brand actually wants to be delivered.

“However, it’s easy to get lost in the plethora of witty punchlines, leading some to go astray from the primary intent. This is why we are always grounded on what we wish to convey. The punchline, the twist, and the mind-boggling ending always come second,” she concluded.

Manila, Philippines – Milk tea brand CoCo Fresh Tea & Juice has a new campaign up its sleeve–but instead of a typical light and jolly ad, it features a much rather candid and hilarious ad dedicated to those who want to alleviate their stress in the most literal way possible. The solution? Literally stab a huge cup to vent out all of those pent-up emotions.

Conceptualised alongside local creative agency GIGIL, the new tongue-in-cheek commercial features veteran journalist Ces Drilon, also known for the meme ‘Stress Drilon’, facing a multitude of everyday woes. Whether it was hilariously sipping a salty coffee drink or getting splashed by a muddy car on a rainy commute, all of these situations led up to her using said cup activation to vent out her emotions–in a rather profanity-laden and hilarious way.

MARKETECH APAC spoke to both CoCo and GIGIL to learn about the concept process of said campaign, and how did they even managed to tap one of the biggest names in Filipino journalism to be the star of said campaign.

Right off the bat, the question was: why Ces Drilon?

“Stress Drilon” has been part of the vernacular. It only felt right to use Ms. Ces Drilon herself! It was refreshing to see her in a different light. In a way, our material was so entertaining, it became a stress reliever for Pinoys, too,” Nanais Hernandez, senior strategic planner at GIGIL quipped.

When asked what was the underlying theme for said campaign, Dana De Leon, associate creative director at GIGIL, notes that milk tea, as a drink, has always been considered as a treat or reward, rather than just a thirst-quencher.

“After a long, tiring day you’d find yourself heading to your favourite milk tea joint and getting that sweet relief in a cup. But before you take a sip, you strike that lid with your straw. And that cathartic little moment, we (the team) felt was a specially unique experience with milk tea. So why not make that experience ten–or a hundred times bigger?,” she said.

She also stressed the importance of injecting humour to this campaign, saying “CoCo – both its drinks and its branding – stems from fun and making people smile. This campaign simply amplified the brand’s existing traits–turning those smiles into belly laughs.”

Hernandez also added, “It all stems back to CoCo’s core–we’re refreshingly fun. Through whatever touchpoint, CoCo should be able to lift people’s spirits, especially during stressful times. .”

As the agency has long been known to create multiple outdoor activations for some of its clients such as Netflix Philippines, GIGIL has noted that activations like this tie up nicely with the overall messaging theme for the campaign.

Beverly Lubid, group account director at GIGIL, said, “We feel that it kind of ties the whole campaign together. Stemming from such an emotional insight (pertaining to stress,) it was just right that we let the audience not just watch, but also experience the relief. It’s one thing to watch someone jab a giant CoCo cup aggressively–but to experience it, we felt, provides a whole new level of catharsis.”

Meanwhile, Charmaine Tan, business development manager at CoCo Fresh Tea & Juice also added insights on the campaign’s direction, also stressing the importance of why Ces Drilon appearance in the ad make the ad very more locally relatable.

“First of all, it has to be the insight of stress being very relatable regardless of demographics. The feeling of stress isn’t supposed to be funny or comedic, but how the campaign painted stress relief in such a humorous way made it click with the audiences, who really resonated with how the character released their own stress in the film,” she said.

Tan added, “Additionally, the “Stress Drilon” insight is very Filipino. Making up a pun from a distinguished broadcaster’s name and using it as a general descriptor of your mood is such a Filipino way of making jokes, and we’re glad that CoCo got to use it in such a unique way while maintaining the main goal and message of the brand — CoCo’s drinks are stress relieving and fun.”

Larry Evans Tan, general manager CoCo Fresh Tea & Juice, commented that they also aimed to create a campaign that was rooted in milk tea being an exciting and rewarding experience whenever you drink it.

“We wanted our audiences to associate CoCo as a source of stress relief and excitement, so the angle was to really find a fun and entertaining way to integrate that insight into a film. The main campaign was just then built up when the team presented the idea of striking a giant cup, then connected it with the Stress Drilon reference for the film,” he said.

He also added, “It ties up very well as CoCo really wanted to present itself as a place where people can relax and reward themselves with a refreshing and relieving drink. We feel the film did a great job in highlighting that if you’re feeling stressed, you can de-stress and reward yourself with a drink in CoCo.”

Manila, Philippines – As the national SIM registration nears its deadline of April 26, the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) has admitted that it will be unable to reach full registration of SIMs across the country. With that in mind, how can telcos encourage their users to register the number affiliated with their SIM?

To pose such a question, local cellular operator Talk N’ Text (TNT), under Smart Communications, recently launched a campaign which magnifies the difficulty brought by life’s normal activities when you don’t have a registered mobile number.

The campaign, conceptualised by the local creative agency GIGIL, spans three films, each with its own varying tale on the importance of registering one’s. The first one depicts a father and son shooing away a woman pretending to be the mother of the household, the second is a man finding himself in a dilemma on how to claim his remittance without one true pairing (OTP) number, and the last is someone doing typical social media stuff–but just using written messages sent by pigeons.

In an exclusive interview with MARKETECH APAC, Nanais Hernandez, senior strategic planner at GIGIL, said that the overarching objective of the campaign is to put a sense of urgency to people in registering their SIM numbers.

“What causes this complacency is that they don’t really know what will happen if they don’t register. We jumped off from a fairly simple insight, ‘walang connection, walang buhay’ [no connection, no life]. Especially with how Filipinos are so reliant on their network connections–it’s our means to build relationships, learn something new, be entertained–not registering your SIM is like cutting off one’s lifeline,” Hernandez said.

As the agency has long been known to release witty and tongue-in-cheek campaigns for some of its clients such as RC Cola, Netflix Philippines, and Julie’s Bakeshop, MARKETECH APAC also asked Hernandez how humour played out in this campaign.

“While [it is] true the insight may have sounded a bit dark, we didn’t want to take away TNT’s signature quirkiness. It’s a fun and witty brand. So we infused that in our materials to still reflect how bleak life would be without a sim connection, but done so in a humorous way only TNT could pull off. This will make people want to watch our films, and ultimately register their SIMs,” she added.

Meanwhile, Dione Tañada, creative director for TNT/Smart, told MARKETECH APAC that the campaign played off the brand’s DNA in humour into the conceptualisation of said ads.

“TNT’s humour was one of the most significant considerations. But we don’t want our target market to laugh for a minute and then move on. We want them to laugh and take action—to register their SIM cards. That’s why we made the stories equally funny and intelligent, making Pinoys realise the urgency and necessity to register their SIM cards,” Tañada said.

This is one of the recent slew of ads GIGIL has worked with, the most recent being with the online job employment platform JobStreet in the Philippines.

Manila, Philippines – The local creative agency GIGIL, through its recent tech arm GIGIL Metama, has launched a new campaign initiative called ‘Divine ArchiTech’, which allows users to convert their prayers into non-fungible tokens (NFTs), allowing users to create NFTs to earn funds for their own faith-based cause.

The new initiative comes days before the Holy Week festivities by Catholics, namely Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday.

‘Divine ArchiTech’ combines faith and technology in a mission to help build churches around the world, while noting the lack of physical churches to service the faithful.

As part of the initiative, ‘Divine ArchiTech’ launched its pioneer project called ‘Made with Prayers’. By donating to the cause, you will gain access to this unique feature that allows you to convert your prayers and hopes using AI to create artwork that can be minted and stored in personal digital wallets. 

Aside from storing them in digital wallets, you may also choose to donate your artwork to the Divine ArchiTech’s gallery and allow them to mint it into an NFT to earn more funds for the cause.

The new NFT project follows its recent one where Kool Pals, a popular comedy group in the Philippines, launched an NFT project which turned hate comments into NFTs.

Manila, Philippines – With companies actively doing background checks when hiring someone, viewing someone’s social media can get confusing for employers. With some potential applicants still hiding under anonymity, employers often have less transparency to look into as to what type of individual their next employee is.

And that is exactly what the latest ads from JobStreet Philippines show: instead of relying on social media for hiring, companies can get ‘real talent’ by visiting the JobStreet platform.

The ads, conceptualised by local creative agency GIGIL, feature a series of hilarious situations when an employer interviews someone from social media. Instead of a real person, they interview a fictional character, an avatar, or even the whole family of the applicant.

For Soleil Badenhop, associate creative director at GIGIL, humour has been an integral part of most of their campaigns, even for a formal brand such as JobStreet.

“Hiring can be really taxing for HR managers. We wanted to come up with content that would break the monotony and entertain them, get their attention while getting the message across clearly,” Badenhop said in an exclusive statement to MARKETECH APAC.

When asked how GIGIL came up with the idea for these ads, she said that while the brief for the ad was to simply market the service for free to HR managers, they wanted to dig deeper into the insights from HR managers to conceptualise the ads.

“We dug deep for true insight and found that HR managers still hire largely on social media simply because the Philippines is still the social media capital of the world. The funny thing about hiring on social media is, you don’t know whom you’re talking to because most profiles use cartoon pictures, avatars, group pictures, and fictional characters. By showing the reality of hiring there, we were able to push JobStreet as the reliable yet free option for hirers,” Badenshop told MARKETECH APAC.

Meanwhile, Kim Martin Viray, country head of marketing at JobStreet Philippines told MARKETECH APAC that aside from promoting said service to HR managers, the overarching objective of the ads was about addressing unstructured hiring, particularly on social media, where it is prone to scams and fraud.

“We have seen ads with humour and lightness to engage better with Filipino audiences, especially on digital. Our ‘Hire With Real Talent for Free’ campaign is one of the first-ever hyperlocal ad creatives we’ve produced for JobStreet Philippines, fronting our employer franchise that is emotive and targets real situations of HR professionals when hiring on social media,” the company told MARKETECH APAC.

They added, “Specifically, the already-heavy and often stressful situation of an SME hirer and then only to get low-quality candidates. To resonate more with the target audience, we re-imagined that situation lightly and with humour while highlighting our key message on what JobStreet can deliver better.”