Manila, Philippines – Last August, Thailand-headquartered tech company True Digital Group (TDG) launched its entertainment platform TrueID in the Philippines which offered free curated content, and since then, its content lineup has grown to include originally produced shows featuring famous Filipino vloggers and celebrities.
During its pilot launch, the platform’s roster of shows included those licensed from leading local broadcast networks GMA and Cignal, and now, TDG in the Philippines announced that a fresh lineup is slated for users from both social media and TV personalities such as TikToker and dancer AC Bonifacio, former “housemate” in reality TV show Pinoy Big Brother and vlogger Baninay Bautista, and social media influencer and content creator Kimpoy Feliciano.
In the past week, AC has already premiered her Style Must-Haves vlog on TrueID. AC started to grow her name in the country when she won the local TV dance competition “Dance Kids” in 2016. TDG said she is also set to premiere more videos on the platform having been signed on as a TrueID Ambassador.
Meanwhile, Baninay and Kimpoy are also slated to premiere their videos on TrueID in the coming weeks. Both personalities will be publishing their daily life vlogs on the platform giving their fans a chance to see more of them on the web.
Filipino social media personalities Baninay Bautista and Kimpoy Feliciano.
TDG said the three social media personalities are only the beginning of what’s to come on TrueID Philippines. 28 Squared Studios, a digital studio owned by another TrueID Ambassador, Philippines-based Chinese model and host Richard Juan, is set to bring in more video content from celebrities and influencers as well as originally-produced content, including a show with Miss World 2013 Megan Young, as revealed on its Instagram.
28squaredstudios’ announcement on Richard Juan and Megan Young’s show.
Other well-known Filipino personalities are expected to premiere their content on the platform soon. This includes lifestyle content creator Erwan Heussaff, actor Enrique Gil, and singer Jinho Bae.
“The vision here is that all Filipino Creators would be creating content not only for TrueID Philippines but also for TrueID Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand. That is what’s exciting about this,” said Dindo Marzan, managing director for True Digital Philippines, Inc.
Manila, Philippines – “Designing the overall digital experience while creating magic in the details.”
The phrase, defining interaction design as a separate entity of user experience design, is a perfect summary of how new experiences can be developed out of ambiguity, as explained in one of UXPH Conference 2020’s lightning talks titled “Designers as Enablers of Change”.
Presented by Daisuke Yukita, one of global design firm IDEO Tokyo’s interaction designers, the talk centers on the importance of creating meaningful designs that speak to customer experience and accessibility. Furthermore, Yukita stresses the importance of bringing the stakeholders on board to further understand the design process and achieve change.
“We should try as much as possible the stakeholders along the design process, and it’s not just the furnished parts, it’s also the messy parts. We need to learn to embrace that effort and time that it may take because it does lead to a bigger impact,” Yukita stated.
During the talk, he also narrates various instances that interaction design has led to a ‘golden age’ of small yet meaningful designs, from micro-features like Recycle Bin and right click, to more meaningful and interactive projects from ‘Remote High Five’ to creating a school from the ground-up.
While often met with ambiguous questions from clients on solving business problems, Yukita notes that most of them change from “I wish it was…” to “How it can be changed…”, all thanks to a diversity of effort.
“There are designers like interaction designers, communication designers, mechanical engineers, and business designers. It’s not just that, there are people from all sorts of backgrounds and careers, like physicians or musicians or food scientists. With these amazing people, we practice design thinking.”
Another key takeaway from the talk is that the design process is, and should be focused on the lens of the people.
“Always think in the lens of the people. When you create something new, you need to think of it from a business sense, which would be the viability; the technology lens, the feasibility, and the people lens, the desirability. You all make the key decisions with the people in the center of the design process.”
Daisuke Yukita, Interaction Designer at IDEO Tokyo
Yukita concludes his talk by adding that aside from taking stakeholders on board, designers must also provide rationale for future processes and create outputs that are distributive
Manila Philippines – Acquiring insurance will always carry its own complexity, and in a bid to trivialize the process of finding the right financial product for consumers, the Philippine arm of Canada-born insurance company Sun Life has launched a campaign that bundles insurance products with mutual funds, rolling them out as different “starter packs.”
Dubbed as “Celebrity Product Starter Pack,” Sun Life wanted to make insurance friendlier by offering “combos” specifically curated for each life stage, enlisting well-known Filipino celebrities that best represent such stages to forefront each bundle.
Sun Life offers five starter packs, namely, the Adulting, Negosyante (entrepreneur), Newlywed, Health, and Parent of OFW (overseas filipino worker) bundles.
For each starter pack, one insurance and mutual fund is bundled together. For example, the Adulting Starter Pack, which is the brand’s offer for first-time workers discovering their independence, combines its basic life insurance plan Sun StartUp and minimal risk mutual fund Sun Life Prosperity Money Market mutual fund for an affordable monthly premium starting at P2,000 ($50).
The said starter pack is endorsed by Gen Z actor and singer Iñigo Pascual. Meanwhile, for its Negosyante or entrepreneur bundle, the brand got young adult and TV personality Enchong Dee.
For its Newlywed Starter Pack, Sun Life has partnered with recently wedded Matteo Guidicelli, who created buzz earlier in the year for his secret wedding with popular Philippine pop star Sarah Geronimo.
For its Health and Parent of OFW starter packs, on the other hand, Sun Life appointed Piolo Pascual, who is also the brand’s main endorser, and Charo Santos-Concio, respectively, who is a well-known media executive in broadcast giant ABS-CBN.
The campaign is a digital campaign with banners rolled out on its social media channels Facebook and Instagram. A 6-second spot for each starter pack has also been published on YouTube, with the brand also executing native email advertisements.
Sun Life Chief Marketing and Client Experience Officer Gilbert Simpao said the company released the bundle marketing campaign, having found that many Filipinos consider insurance as an overwhelming and expensive endeavor.
“This [insight] prompted Sun Life to highlight and offer the budget-friendly essential products to start their financial foundation with. These insurance and investment starter packs can suit different lifestyles and needs of Filipinos,” he said.
He added, “With the Celebrity Product Starter Packs, Filipinos will have a clearer starting point in their pursuit of their financial goals, especially now that everyone is striving to rise above the challenges presented by the pandemic.”
Manila, Philippines – We often think in the range of equivalents, that is, if something is big, we expect that all things toward it mirror the same gigantic force, but such is certainly not the case with JG Summit Holdings – one of the biggest conglomerates in the Philippines – which revealed that in bringing to life the company’s digital transformation, one of its most powerful weapons is “starting small.”
Two years ago, JG Summit fully jumped on its intention to shift to a digital experience when it declared that it aims to become the leading digital company in the Philippines. In the recently held UXPH ConferenceSaturday, a two-day conference for experience designers in the Philippines, the company’s SVP for digital transformation and corporate services Lisa Gokongwei-Cheng walked UX specialists through on how the firm successfully materialized its digitization, not just for its customers but for its employees as well.
If you’re a startup built in the heights of the current digital lifestyle, innovation in such area most probably comes second nature, for if it isn’t the business’ bread and butter, it’s one of its main operational pillars. But for a giant like JG Summit that was incorporated in the 50’s, to adopt digital transformation poses a bigger challenge.
JG Summit has over five business units emanating from different industries, such as airline company Cebu Pacific Air, commercial bank Robinsons Bank (RBank), and F&B Universal Robina Corporation (URC). According to Cheng, the biggest question for the company to answer is, “How do you innovate within a traditional, successful, and large conglomerate?”
Cheng said the question emerges because of resistors – businesses who can’t seem to see the ROI of taking a 360 degree turn to digital, because with their eyebrows raised, they tend to think, “Why fix it, if it ain’t broken?”
“At the beginning, none of the business units wanted to work with us. It would cost too much, it would disrupt their business as usual,” shared Cheng in the conference’s session Lessons in Digital Transformation in a Corporate Setting.
With much persistence, the company eventually found its willing guinea pig, its property development unit – Robinsons Land Corporation (RLC).
The digitization initiative with RLC launched four projects in six months – a hotel property management system, a sellers portal, a buyers portal, and a malls directory.
As Cheng emphasized in her virtual talk, “start with small wins,” and through RLC’s leadership, President and CEO Frederick Go, the projects have been pioneered through the “lighthouse” mindset – which like a lighthouse, the first of JG Summit’s digital experiences are meant to light the way, “to guide ships,” or its other business units to fully harness technological innovation.
According to a blog post by JG Summit, Go said the main goal of the digitization project was to find the pain points among its stakeholders – customers, employees, and clients – and figure out how technology can offer as a solution. As identified, those were not being able to find a store in the mall, a room for a more simplified buyer and seller process for clients and sales agents within its residential division, and finding a way to enhance the customer experience for the guests of its hotel.
Of the buyers portal, for example, Go said, “ It helps automate our buyers’ most common interactions with us. We will make it easy for them to know when their next payments are due and monitor their receipts. The Buyers Portal allows them to view and update their account information, manage their payments, view and download the latest statement of accounts, and log requests and inquiries directly.”
In jumpstarting the “lighthouse” with RLC, JG summit had to take the baby step of working with one resource at the time – a single digital consultant.
“So we worked with our consultant, our one full-time resource for Robinsons land who worked with RLC employees on these projects, while they were also pursuing business as usual,” said Cheng.
Two years in from declaring its mission of digitization, JG Summit’s was a home run – successfully realizing its intent of digital transformation, with a slew of online portals and systems rolled out, following its pilot digital experiences with RLC.
For its commercial banking, RBank was able to develop the QuickR feature for its banking app, where the bank now offers a contactless alternative for sending and receiving money through a QR code.
URC’s global exports division, on the other hand, wanted to address their clients’ concerns with placing orders manually and solved it through the Global Export Order Management System (OMS). For SouthStar Drug, a division of JG Summit’s retail holdings, an e-commerce site has been established just right before the community quarantine was enacted in the country.
Meanwhile, for its guinea pig RLC, its team of just one consultant has now sprung to 10 key people in its digital transformation team, with 21 new projects under its belt. One of its recent – a portal for its condominium residents, myRLC Homeowner’s Portal, where residents’ requests such as work permits or gate passes have now been digitized.
Cheng said, “[It goes to show] that you can start with one project and a few resources. Don’t try to boil the ocean. We used the RLC example to show different parts of the conglomerate how it can be done. They are still trying to scale agile, but are on the right path.”
Concluding her talk at the conference, Cheng gave some powerful words, saying, “[Digital] transformation is not an end state, it’s a journey.”
She added, “We keep iterating our operational model as we learn. In a few months, we probably will learn a few more things, or realize that some of these [are] wrong. The point is to keep pivoting.”
Manila, Philippines – With increased online spending during the pandemic also comes a surge of online purchase complaints, and this has been evident in Southeast Asia market The Philippines, with the country’s Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) revealing that a total of 14,869 complaints have been made against online shops this year, according to a report by Philippine News Agency.
The complaints were made from the period of January to October this year, where according to DTI Undersecretary for Consumer Protection Group Ruth Castelo, nature of the complaints spanned violations of the Price Act, the quality of products, and deceptive, unfair, or unconscionable sales acts or practices.
Being the top e-commerce sites in the country, Shopee and Lazada were reported to account for the majority of complaints with a combined 6,907 number of flags.
Compared to the full year of 2019, complaints against Lazada grew three-fold from 1,014 to 3,475 complaints for the first 10 months of 2020. Meanwhile, those against Shopee increased over five times, from 607 complaints from the end of 2019, to a total of 3,432 complaints this year.
“Ninety percent of the total online complaints from October 2020 are against two of the more familiar platforms,” said Castelo.
She added the remaining complaints last month involved transactions on Facebook and other online platforms.
In early October, news about a scammed student astounded Filipinos, where a 20-year-old received rocks instead of his ordered laptop.
Manila, Philippines – The country’s Department of Trade and Industry has rolled out its new Christmas-themed web series on YouTube titled “PASA-LOVE” to highlight various local and regional products in the country.
The web series, which translates to “Share The Love,”is the department’s answer to promote the “Buy Local” campaign, especially as Filipino entrepreneurs are hugely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The “Buy Local” campaign aims to help these entrepreneurs stay afloat by patronizing their products.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Xg0dF_4RRo&t=90s
“A lot of our countrymen have lost their jobs and their businesses due to the pandemic. Thus, this is the perfect time to let them feel the real spirit of Christmas. Through simple patronization of locally-made products, we can share our love for the country, and show the real definition of unity. Buy local, give local this Christmas,” said Blesila A. Lantayona, DTI’s regional operations group undersecretary.
The “PASA-LOVE” web series premiered last November 3 and has currently released its fourth episode, where the department has already promoted food products from the Cordillera region, locally-made shoes, and sandals from Marikina City, and heritage crafts from the Western Visayas region. More episodes are set to be released on its YouTube channel.
Singapore – NME, a British music magazine that has expanded its reach in Asia, has announced the launch of NME Shop, a one-stop shop for music-related items, including official merchandise, vinyl records and music studio equipment.
Targeted primarily to the Singaporean, Malaysian and the Philippine market, items in the NME shop are curated by NME Asia’s members for regional and user preference.
Official merchandise sold in the shop include exclusive NME-branded merchandise and also band-themed items, including those from celebrities such as David Bowie, Black Sabbath, Daydreamer and Blondie.
Vinyl records and cassette tapes of official music releases are also available, from international celebrities such as Billie Eilish and The 1975, to Singapore-based artists such as The Observatory.
For music producers, equipment such as CD turntables, speakers, launchpads, and headsets are also available for purchase in the online shop.
“Since 1952 NME has been a musical tastemaker. It’s now grown into a global media powerhouse committed to creating and curating content, products and experiences essential to fans of music and pop culture today. We’re now extending our iconic tastemaking to physical music products, festival merch, and music gear to delight music lovers in Asia,” said Meng Ru Kuok, CEO of NME parent company BandLab Technologies.
United Kingdom – In celebration of the company’s 40th partnership anniversary with children charity foundation Make A Wish, Disney EMEA launches its “From Our Family To Yours” campaign, and features an animated video advertisement centered on the spirit of Filipino Christmas.
Featuring two characters, a grandmother (Lola) and her granddaughter, the video shows notable Filipino Christmas traditions, specifically parol making, or making of Christmas lanterns.
The video starts off in a Philippine location in the 1940s where the grandmother in his childhood days strolls around in a plaza or a public quadrangle and meets up with her father. He then gestures a mano, a Filipino honorific way of showing respect to the elders (0:15 video timestamp). She is then given by her father a Mickey Mouse doll as a Christmas gift.
Fast forward to 2005, and the grandmother and her granddaughter live under the same roof, and bond over making parols, a Christmas version of Filipino lanterns made from bamboo stilts and colored paper (0:50 video timestamp). However, as time passed by, the granddaughter lost interest in lantern making, evident in the granddaughter’s shift to other teenage things.
One particular scene provokes Lola’s sadness, as her granddaughter leaves the house, leaving her alone and the old Mickey Mouse doll she has been holding on for decades, an ear ripped off.
However, the video concludes with the daughter realizing that the Mickey Mouse was a memento of her Lola and decides to surprise her grandmother with a plethora of Christmas lanterns around the house and gifting her a fixed Mickey Mouse doll. Both are brought back to their cherished memories, and hug each other at the end.
The video’s official soundtrack is titled “Love Is A Compass” performed by UK artist Griff. Digital download purchases of the track and a limited edition vintage Mickey Mouse soft doll are eligible to support the Make a Wish Foundation, as 100% and 25% of the item sales respectively are donated to the said foundation.
Philippines – International chips brand Lay’s Chips, which has established a market in the country, has released a Christmas-themed video advertisement and puts a modern twist to the beloved Filipino Christmas lullaby “Christmas in our Hearts.”
Titled “Remix In Our Hearts,” the advertisement features the song’s original performerJose Mari Chan, and Nico Bolzico, the husband of actress Solenn Heusaff and a well-known online celebrity.
The video starts with Bolzico sitting down on a couch and eating chips. As he is listening to a Christmas melody, he comes across a ‘meme’ of Jose Mari Chan saying “Do Jose What I See?”, a play on Jose Mari Chan’s name.
As Bolzico dreams of a ‘wish duet’, Chan appears in the scene, and both perform the jingle ‘Remix in our Hearts’. The scene changes from the house setting, to a suit-and-tie performance and finally to a hip hop vibe.
The recent campaign promotes a “Double the Holiday Flavor” message, which is shown in the advertisement featuring Lay’s Chips Classic Flavor and Lay’s Chips Sour Cream & Onion.
Manila, Philippines – A good news for foodpanda users in the Philippines – its premium subscription service pandpro is now available in the country.
Accordion to a report by Noypigeeks, the pro membership has already been rolled out in late October, with foodpanda only releasing its official promotions Sunday morning.
For a monthly subscription fee, users are granted three main benefits – free delivery, additional discounts, and more vouchers.
For a minimum order of P400, foodpanda will be waving users’ delivery charge for the first five orders of the month. With discounts, members will be getting an unlimited extra 5% off of pick-up orders, albeit, not to be topped up on an existing promo. Meanwhile, the subscription also provides three additional 10% discount vouchers.
The free delivery feature is applicable to all restaurants and shops. In addition, pandapro members will be able to receive other exclusive discounts of 20% and up. Both the subscription and application of benefits are available only through the mobile app.
Pandapro has been earlier rolled out in other Southeast Asia countries, such as in Singapore in February of this year.
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