Pinoy Big Brother: a successful Filipino online story driving the fans to demand more content not seen on TV

PBB is legendary in the history of Filipino television — it turns nobodies into instant celebrities and endorsers. Thanks to the number of fans and followers who cover the description “die-hard” in its true essence and form. The increasing number of conversations and communities online is quite overwhelming. Number of fan pages on Facebook? Twenty. Number of groups on Facebook? Twenty-eight. Combining all the fans would equal to around 150,000 nationwide. There are so many blogs about the PBB fever and most of the important bits and information about this season is all in its Multiply page. And I haven’t even started about the Twitter buzz it’s getting.

This season’s Double Up fans have demanded more from the show and Globe happened to stumble upon the need for something more that PBB can offer to viewers.

Globe Tattoo is rewarding its subscribers with exclusive Nomination Night videos NOT SEEN ON TV and is getting the right amount of Filipino viral push for it. Just launched last Saturday, there are already 10 uncut versions of the housemates' confessions. You also get to stay in touch with your friends within the site because of Facebook Connect. You may read the 4th Angel's Spy Blog who is Globe Tattoo's resident PBB Spy blogger committed to bringing you the biggest breaks on everything that happens inside Kuya's House! Just like Gossip Girl, you may subscribe to 4th Angel's juicy texts.

Globe Tattoo is cooking up more firsts in the Filipino advertising landscape. Synergy for TV, web, and mobile will definitely open a gateway for more Filipino online success stories for Globe. I sure hope other brands will give us a full on experience
such as this and deliver more online marketing strategies relevant to what Filipinos are talking about. Globe will totally emerge to be stronger in building powerful engagements with their customers in relevant touchpoints (not just TV!).

Listening to the people's demands pays off and you can't mess with PBB being a Filipino online favorite!

Converse: Standing Out in a World of Replicas

In a world dominated by mass production as a key defining feature of the modern and post-modern era, duplication seems to be way to go. The market is proliferated with goods and services that seem to just be different variations of each other. Pirated shoes, bags, watches, clothes, electronics and what not have taken over, much like the piracy of music and movies that are available in retail outlets everywhere for a dime a dozen. The idea behind everything is that the lower the price of each individual item (which can be achieved through said mass production), the happier consumers are. The more happy consumers there are, the more happy suppliers there are. What’s happening is the propagation of a culture of piracy, with originality no longer a defining value of today’s society. But contrary to what is perceived, in this day and age of cloning and copycats, never has there been a higher premium for innovation than before. And Converse, a leading proprietor for footwear that rebel against the dictates of the status quo, has taken the fight against mediocrity to the interactive world.

Converse, famous for the all-time great “Chuck Taylor All-Stars” that has served as a symbol of rebellion and uniqueness for numerous decades now, recently came out with the promo “What’s your Favorite Pair?” which enticed Converse shoe lovers to come up with their own UGC and send them through the shoe company’s promo site. The promo aimed to make the most creative photos, videos and artworks out of the Converse community, reinforcing the brand’s identity as an advocate of originality. No longer was the story being told by the brand managers and creative directors of the company, but by the Converse users themselves. Creativity was no longer trapped inside the four corners of an ad agency. It transgressed the hearts, minds and souls of those who truly believed in the product. The promo ran from May to August of 2009, becoming an instant hit to the members of the Converse community. The site had almost 2,000 members and almost160 entries, all wanting not just to get hold of the prizes that Converse was giving away weekly but to showcase their talents and make people take notice. In order to promote the site further, the site was advertised through the Abs-Cbn website as well as through Multiply Leaderboard ads. It was also cross-promoted through Yeng Constantino’s site, as her followers were seen as the same stand-up-and-take-notice-while-we-rock people that would most likely be Converse-lovers. These marketing endeavors definitely helped out in getting more than 41 thousand views for the site in the few months of the promo’s duration. This is quite a success story in a world dominated by patronage to reproducibility. And they haven't stopped there, as Converse is doing another UGC project aimed at tapping into music aficionados. This has all the makings of another successful endeavor.

Originality has never gone out of style, and thanks to brands like Converse, it never will.

Tiangges in Multiply: a successful online Filipino story

“Sis, how much if I buy 3 items? Pwede discount?”

I never expected to get so many sisters in a span of 1 month. About a year and a half ago, I got together with some friends and we attended the fourth and final book launch at Power Books wearing our own Twilight-inspired shirts. We wanted to feel the whole Comic-Con vibe and when we got there, the girls started going crazy. Girls asking for our numbers? Check. Girls asking to see more designs? Uncheck. Girls asking for pictures of more shirts? Uncheck. So that’s when we decided to create our own Multiply store and discovered so many other Multiply stores creating good business online.

I’m sure Multiply didn’t intend for their site to be the biggest shopping haven for Filipinos online. If you haven’t heard, they finally made it official for anyone to sell.

Talk about an influx of tiangges from Greenhills and Tiendesitas turning their stores into Multiply stores. Even people who never had tiangges could easily set up one in a snap.

The formula to success in creating a Multiply store lies in the managing and moderating of the page. The secret to keeping your store healthy is being friends with your customers. Take a picture with them after a meet-up. Ask them why they like your stuff. If they can’t find anything in your store, ask them what they want. Personal touch is key. Always reply.

You are your own brand so get yourself out there! Join the bazaars. Join other social media networks and forums. Make more and more friends and best of all, don’t be a spammer. Happy selling!

Our "Viral" Pet Hamster and SPAMguard!

Hi Guys! We have an announcement! Whilst most webmasters are busy keeping their websites secure and free of unnecessary clutter by using verifications and CAPTCHA codes, we decided to keep our blog as clean by using a different means. we got ourselves a pet to guard our site of spammers and spam in general! Thanks to aBowman, we now have a cute little hamster to keep all of us safe!

We'll place him on the right side of our blog to watch over all our visitors including you. Don't worry, he doesn't bite! Just make sure you feed him and play with him from time to time. Oh by the way, we don't doesn't have a name for him yet, but we're thinking of naming him "BANNER". What do you think? In any case, be nice to him...he might pee on you!

How is this related to our blog about Philippine Success Stories!? We'll you can treat our pet hamster as an online case study of an attempt to make something viral! Again many thanks to aBowman!

The FailBlog: A Filipino Online Favorite

Failure is a part of life. No one has never experienced failing because those who even tried not to fail, failed to fail (double negative? yeah just to press on my point) Take the most successful names for example: Bill Gates, Michael Jordan, and Oprah Winfrey. I'm sure they all had their low points before they started to experience the successes they are now enjoying. It is, after all, through several failures that we find out the benevolent path towards victory - from grander stages of career, fame, fortune, love and whatnot, to everyday mundane situations that may seem insignificant. Failure is not always about hardships and moping around and feeling sorry for oneself. There is constantly a lighter side to it, and the FAILblog has been successful (irony!) in encapsulating this.

Before anything else, why is it a Filipino online favorite?! Basically because all of you out there, Filipinos, from the Philippines, can't help but love blogs like these, just like the now "defunct" but oh so hilarious Hay! Men! Ang Blog ng mga Tunay na Lalake! (all of us who go to work everyday know that the FAILblog is a good way to kill time *winks*).

NOW, the FAILblog is just a weblog filled with pictures and videos of stupid signs, stupid designs that fail their very purpose, extremely dumb puns, major wipeouts, mind-boggling feats of idiocy, discreet and not-so-discreet signs and images that have sexual connotations, bad engineering and unfortunate situations, you will never again look at failure the same way. Enjoy a showcase of extreme lapse of judgments, some bordering on morbidity (but is sure to squeeze out some chuckles from you) while some bank on their sexual innuendo (warning, some may be nsfw). A big caption that says “FAIL” or a variation of it makes the failure all the more glaring. It’s not all about failing, though, as FAILblog posts the occasional "WIN" for extremely witty signs, write-ups or captions or extremely lucky situations.

The FAILblog has been so successful here in the Philippines and in the WWW that it provides a good chunk of the 5.5 million clicks a day to the Pet Holdings Empire (responsible for other novelty sites such as Once Upon a Win, Engrish Funny, GraphJam and I Can Has Cheezburger) to which it belongs to. It won in the 2009 Webby Awards in both the ”Weird” and “Funny” categories, making failures out of other more popular sites like Southpark and The Onion. There are even merchandize available now for FAILblog addicts. They have a section named “LOLmart”, a brilliantly named online store that captures the spirit of the site and sells items such as shirts, stamps, toys, magnets and buttons. It has even spawned a book that brought "failure" from the blogosphere to the printing press.

To add to the "success" side of failing, the FAILblog capitalizes on it's amused readers who are given the power to share on the blog their own fail findings making the site a unique and powerful crowdsourcing case study.

The irony of FAILblog's success is truly phenomenal. Who would’ve ever thought that so much failure can bring about so much success? So go ahead, visit FAILblog and be inspired to fail... Or laugh in the face of failure.. or, you know, something like that (FAIL.)