The broadening of marketing’s domain was not an easily won battle. It drew critics who preferred that marketing stick to figuring out how to sell more toothpaste, refrigerators and computers. But this columnist’s thinking has been that new perspectives enter a marketplace full of ideas. And as in any marketplace, those perspectives that survive are those that have use value. I have been gratified to see the overwhelming majority of corporate social responsibility (CSR) stories and marketing practitioners accept the legitimacy of the broadened marketing concept.

One of the main contributions of modern marketing has been to help companies see the importance of shifting their organizations from being product-centered to becoming market- and customer-centered. Questions that every business must ask itself played an important role in launching the new thinking. But many years passed before companies actually started to undergo a transformation from “inside-out” thinking to “outside-in” thinking. Even today there are still too many companies operating on a selling-product focus instead of a meeting-needs focus.

The premium will go to those companies that invent new ways to create, communicate and deliver value. Take Nokia, for example. The brand’s authenticity allows the market to intuitively grasp what these values are without having to be told, or without the company even having to express the values precisely, because Nokia is true to its values and the product is true to its function.

For Nokia Philippines general manager William Hamilton-Whyte, “togetherness” is the core of the philosophy. He adopts a communitarian attitude toward forging a partnership with the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas-Basketball Association of the Philippines (SBP-BAP) for the three-year, P76-million program of the Philippine Junior Men’s Basketball team. Along with Tao Corp., one of the major distributors of Nokia in the country, Nokia Philippines bankrolled the training expenses of the team, as well as the housing and education of the youth training pool. The main national youth team backer has allotted P20 million for the project this year, P25 million and another P30 million in 2009.

“For the past two years, the Philippines had no basketball team. It started with the fact that it was very difficult for the country to have a national team because, usually, you would pick the players here and there and get them to play at the last second. At the end of the day [when they were on official tournaments], they didn’t know how to play together,” Whyte told this columnist in a recent interview.

He added: “Tao Corp. and Nokia Philippines are supporting BAP-SBP as a way of helping the country’s ambitious bid to participate in the Olympics.”

The team is composed of 16 of the finest youth players aged 18 years old and below from the collegiate ranks plucked from different regions all over the country. Many of the participants were selected from the National Basketball Training Center (Nokia NBTC), the group exclusively in charge of choosing competent basketball players who will represent the country in future international tournaments. Others were personally screened by top basketball coach Franz Pumaren himself.

According to Whyte, the Nokia Pilipinas RP Youth Team bagged the Southeast Asian Basketball Association (Seaba) Junior Men’s Basketball Tournament recently in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It was the first international championship by the Philippines since the country was suspended by the International Basketball Federation two years ago. It was the first international youth championship for Pumaren and the first crown for the Philippines since winning the Seaba Youth crown in 2004 held here in the country. Because of this, the Nokia Pilipinas RP Youth Team earned a slot in the Asian Youth Championships to be held in Tehran, Iran, from August 28 to September 5. Should the Nokia Pilipinas RP Youth Team finish decently in the tough Asian tourney, the team will get a chance to participate in the Youth Olympic Games in Singapore in 2010. The last time the Philippines made it to the Olympics was in 1972.

Tao, headed by its president Jun Sy, and Nokia provided team class training as it sent the entire squad to the Abunassar Institute as part of its preparation for the Seaba tourney. The institute is the same training center for NBA superstars as well as the RP Men’s Basketball team that participated in the Olympic qualifying tournament in Tokushima, Japan. The Nokia Pilipinas quintet, likewise, competed as a guest team in the Philippine Basketball League and played against local youth teams in the US.

“[This program] is very much aligned with Nokia values and the way we see things as a company. And again, I like the challenge of starting from scratch, giving the opportunity to people who have nothing to become something,” Whyte pointed out.

In this larger worldview that helps to keep consumers loyal, Whyte has humanized his company. In an era marked by increasing backlash to corporate globalization, Nokia manages to continue expanding its global empire and network with no public criticism and resistance.

An innovator, Whyte established new systems and organizational structures within Nokia to strengthen its relationships between companies on all levels. His formula for success has been his ability to combine the power of relationships—building with efficient, relevant and timely strategies to benefit customers and trade, which he regards as his “reason for being.”

Furthermore, “connecting people,” can also be symbolic in nature, spread by an increased awareness of the meaning behind Nokia’s social initiative toward CSR. Access to education and getting children off the streets to make sense of their lives allows Nokia to share a philosophical grounding, such as a belief in the expression of cultural creativity or “artists coming together to serve” for a cause—and now are actively shaping into something that will be a useful part of their and other people’s lives.

“We provide a program that will mentor the youth to become world-class basketball players and for [street] children to unleash their hidden talents into music and love of the arts, and to become outstanding citizens,” Whyte said. It is this climate of camaraderie and unity that provided the social reinforcement of Nokia’s CSR to make it the company that it is today.

Pru Life UK sets English discipline agenda

Have you ever watched a stutterer get hung up on a wall? Desperate not to make a mistake, he tries his tongue up in knots. It’s as if he’s saying, “I’d like to get this word out, but what if it’s the wrong word? Maybe I shouldn’t even risk it.”

This is what happens when you try to be proficient in English at the same time you’re trying to get it down on paper. You cancel every thought and wind up editing yourself into oblivion. There you are, “stuttering” and making yourself miserable in the process. Pretty soon you just can’t take it anymore. That’s when you give up, make a beeline for the refrigerator and you’re back to procrastinating.

Finally, joining hands to take a literal leap of faith, Pru Life UK steps off further the cliff, launching its English-proficiency advocacy. The company is optimistic that Filipinos can further show tremendous improvement in English proficiency to greater awareness of the language and other market-driven factors.

“When we learned that there were studies done which showed the deterioration in English for the Filipinos, we felt it was the right combination and great opportunity to help [them] write and speak better English,” president and CEO Nishit P. Majmudar said in an interview with this columnist.

Of course, there’s a catch: In order to understand this better, a column in the BusinessMirror with a selected, distinguished panel of writers will advocate English proficiency in all aspects of English-language competency.

The awareness, according to vice president for marketing Belle S. Tiongco, FLMI, would be a series of articles in this paper, “and so we are tapping well-known Filipino writers with short essays who subscribe to the same mission basically that the awareness to speak, read, write and think better English should be awakened in the Filipino.” According to her, the series of articles will run every week in time for the opening of the school year.

“We are hoping that through the BusinessMirror, being a powerful print media, we chose [you] because we want the message to be strong to reach the Filipino public. The next generation has to realize [that] being good at being bilingual is to his or her own advantage. Our mission is to improve the lives of Filipinos. We chose the language,” Tiongco added.

“Since we are a British company, we are benefactors of our English legacy,” Lora Lee French-Reboton, senior manager for brand and communications, noted.

This advocacy is a collaborative effort to encourage Filipinos to speak in English and in the way Filipinos think in English. There was an alarming decline in English proficiency two years ago, but now, according to reports, we have an apparent recovery. Latest nationwide surveys showed Filipinos posting an 11-percent increase in self-assessed understanding of English, a 10-percent increase in reading and 13-percent increase in writing English.

The Philippine life insurance unit of British financial giant Prudential Plc., Pru Life UK fueled its growth in the Philippines with the acquisition of All State Insurance and ING Life early this decade. And the plan is to leapfrog, whether through organic or further nonorganic tack. But while scoring well against most local competitors, to date, Pru Life UK has yet to reach its goal of being among the top three players in this market.

Pru Life UK’s English-proficiency advocacy will encompass much of the accumulated knowledge of some of our famous writers about what English techniques work best, which patterns of language most successfully reach and hold readers, and, most important, develop your ear for the sound of the written language. When you have done these, you will have the knowledge and the wisdom to apply the best tip of all: Use your common sense.

Bring out the Barney

At quick glance, you will not exactly know what a leading Filipino web portal like Yehey! has in common with a top fashion magazine, the country’s largest sports-store chain, a fat-burning fruit juice, a string of crab-concept restaurants, mobile services for overseas Filipino workers and a growing cosmetics line.

Until you get to talk to Donald Patrick L. Lim, president and CEO of Yehey!

Not yet in his mid-30s, Lim already joins the ranks of successful and innovative entrepreneurs and outstanding brand builders under the age of 35 who were recently recognized at the 3rd Young Market Masters Awards (YMMA) organized by Mansmith and Fielders Inc. of noted marketing guru Josiah L. Go.

Despite the early achievement in his young, decadelong career in the field of marketing, the architect behind the “reloaded” and reengineered Yehey.com remains humble.

“Yehey! was never a marketing phenomenon—not before, and not even now,” admits Lim, who is also the founder and president of the Internet and Mobile Marketing Association of the Philippines. “We are still in the process of making it a superior marketing product. However, we have managed to transform the entire Yehey Corp. from a technology company to a spanking online-marketing firm. From our people to our process, the entire Teamyehey now breathes and speaks marketing.”

Lim confessed that he was initially reluctant to take up a marketing course. In his speech at the YMMA awarding ceremonies, he said marching orders from his mother and a mentor’s advice were the simple yet practical reasons behind his forced entry into the field.

“Marketing is all about being able to sell. I have learned that a good marketer can sell to people things they don’t need. An excellent marketer can sell to people what they don’t want,” he said. And “with so many products that are no good,” Lim says his mentor assured him he would never be jobless in the field.

Being a father to a two-year-old daughter and a year-old son exposed him a great deal to the power of marketing. “I did not have enough choice but to get introduced to the world of Barney,” he said. He marveled at how even Barney nonbelievers like him got entrapped to shell out a hefty sum to sit for hours and watch the purple dinosaur sing his popular “I love you, you love me” ditty at the Araneta Coliseum.

“I should learn from Barney,” he said. The lethal combination of aggressive and subtle promotional marketing, word of mouth and “pester power,” he said, transformed the purple dinosaur into Hollywood hero stature.

While his own Yehey! is not exactly singing “I love you, you love me” all the way to the bank, Lim said the Filipino Internet portal has unleashed its own lethal combination of having team talent, a winning mindset and aggressive marketing. Yehey! recently launched its own rewards system and its version of Yahoo! Answers (Pinoy Henyo) and Yahoo! Messenger (Yehey! TOL).

Soon, the portal will also introduce its own virtual world called Dangka and the local version of YouTube. It is also at the forefront of creating online-marketing campaigns and web sites of several companies.

All these efforts, Lim says, are all geared toward making Yehey! a marketing great. “Marketing is not as easy as it looks, nor as difficult as it seems. In the end, it is all about passion, bringing out the Barney in you, and wanting to make a difference,” he added.

AdMix: Using CSR to understand, create, communicate and deliver value measure and reward

The broadening of marketing’s domain was not an easily won battle. It drew critics who preferred that marketing stick to figuring out how to sell more toothpaste, refrigerators and computers. But this columnist’s thinking has been that new perspectives enter a marketplace full of ideas. And as in any marketplace, those perspectives that survive are those that have use value.

Bubuwit Squeaks: Competitive analysis

The quarterly companion magazine of the BusinessMirror, View, partnered on a very special event with the Philippine Marketing Association general membership meeting held recently at the Hard Rock Café in Glorietta 3, Makati City.