BusinessWorld and brands: Evolving synergies grounded on solid trust

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By Adrian Paul B. Conoza, Special Features Assistant Editor

Along with the reputation BusinessWorld has established with the business community and the general public, another contributing factor to the paper’s continuing success for 35 years is the trust it has built with top brands and advertisers.

Through the years, brands have not only regularly kept in touch with BusinessWorld for the placement of their advertisements in print and for sponsorships for in events. More recently, brands have also collaborated on projects where their messages have been amplified on BusinessWorld’s various platforms.

This growing synergy BusinessWorld has had with brands, for Executive Vice-President Lucien C. Dy Tioco, is generally built on the long-stand trust the media and content company has built for its excellence and quality in economic journalism.

“It boils down to three factors: our credibility that we have established over the years, our clout and influence over the business community, and the quality of content that we produce which is very attuned to the needs of the business community,” Mr. Dy Tioco said.

“I think one of the reasons why advertisers choose to work with us for their content over and over again is because we have managed to maintain our integrity despite the changing times. They know, respect, and value our journalism standards and editorial guidelines. There’s no need to sacrifice our own brand of integrity to better serve our advertisers,” BusinessWorld Special Features Editor Josielyn Luna-Manuel added.

These defining trademarks of BusinessWorld have been the solid convictions for Cocolife, one of the paper’s top advertisers, to let their messages be amplified through BusinessWorld’s features and platforms, as the insurer’s president Atty. Martin B. Loon, shared.

Sharing the same vision with BusinessWorld has been a solid factor for another top advertiser, Toyota Motor Philippines (TMP).

“Over the years, BusinessWorld has been one of our trusted partners in delivering information about our products and services to our customers. This partnership with BusinessWorld over 3 decades has made us achieve our common vision of helping build and transform the industry for the better,” TMP First Vice-President for Vehicle Services Operations Sherwin Chualim said in an e-mail.

“As the first Filipino-owned and ISO-certified Life Insurance company, it has been our mission to help Filipinos reach their goals, financial or otherwise, in any way that we could assist them. Needless to say, BusinessWorld shares the same sentiment as us, and they too ‘Believe in the Filipino’ as much as we do,” he said.

In addition, Jay R. Sarmiento, BusinessWorld’s sales and marketing director, credited the people in her department for making the brand partnerships and advertising deals productive for both ends.

“We have the best Sales and Marketing team who deliver what we promise to advertisers. The Sales and Marketing team, as well as the Special Features team, are organized and consistent when it comes to servicing the needs of the clients,” Ms. Sarmiento said.

Ms. Manuel described how close collaboration with advertisers has made it possible for the whole BusinessWorld Sales and Marketing department, which includes the Special Features team, to come up with projects that “help brands effectively reach out to their target market and our audience, and achieve their desired communication goals.”

“I believe that the success of the many projects we’ve done for and with the advertisers were really a result of great collaboration — from ideation to actual production and publication — between BusinessWorld and clients,” Ms. Manuel said.

“From our end, every time we get on board a client’s project, we always think that their project is our project, and their success is our success. Hence, we strive to offer them the best inputs and outputs given the time and resources that we have,” she added.

Among special projects that brands have embarked on with BusinessWorld include special editions of BusinessWorld Insights, notable of which, for Ms. Sarmiento, are those with nonprofit organization Habitat For Humanity on a “BAHAYnihan” forum; with Parkway Cancer Centre Singapore for webinars on diagnosing and treating various cancers; and a three-part Fintech Series held in partnership with the recently-rebranded Maya.

Such online fora gave the brands, through their representatives or experts, an opportunity to share information that would be relevant to BusinessWorld’s audience and even those who chance upon the webinars.

Aside from online webinars, special editions of the “BusinessWorld B-Side” podcast have been an area of collaboration for some brands like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).

“TCS is delighted to have found a partner in an equally established and trusted brand that is BusinessWorld. It has been a joy collaborating with the different teams at BusinessWorld to share our story and guide the way for Philippine businesses to innovate for greater futures,” Michelle Bautista, marketing manager at TCS Philippines, shared.

More notably, nonetheless, brands have also tapped the capabilities of BusinessWorld for creating quality commemorative special projects.

“Personally, my favorites are the false cover we did for Asian Development Bank’s 50th Anniversary in BusinessWorld and the special 35th Anniversary Magazine of the Makati Business Club,” Ms. Manuel shared. “Our team’s hard work paid off because it’s an honor for us to be part of these two well-respected organizations’ milestones and to help them put on paper their stories about building a better future for our country.”

More recently, Mr. Dy Tioco noted that BusinessWorld plays a very important role in the PhilSTAR Media Group’s (PMG) advocacy program “Nakakalocal: Love Local, Grow Global.” The initiative, launched earlier this year, aims to promote and encourage consumers to buy local and support local businesses, particularly small and medium enterprises (SMEs), that produce great products.

“Nakakalocal” maximizes PMG’s assets, including BusinessWorld, for a noteworthy advocacy. Moreover, the initiative is supported by the country’s biggest corporate institutions, which paves the way for creating a vast support ecosystem for Filipino SMEs.

“Our newest advocacy is very well-received by brands. They see several areas of collaboration that we can do together. And the wonderful thing about those collaborations is that there’s really a common goal. It’s not just serving one brand or the other, but it’s really about serving a common goal of trying to uplift the economy by helping our SMEs and inspiring people to really start their own business,” Mr. Dy Tioco, who also serves as PMG’s executive vice-president, shared.

For the years ahead, as new platforms for informing and engaging the business community have been productively explored, BusinessWorld looks forward to further collaborating with brands and help get their messages across meaningfully.

“We are open for collaboration; we can create content for them online and offline. We can explore a lot of possibilities,” Ms. Sarmiento said.

Thanking partners for the trust and confidence they have given to BusinessWorld, Mr. Dy Tioco said that the trusted media company will continue to be with them as they move forward, step by step, to the continuous transformations they are embarking on.

“Whatever crisis or success that you are going through, BusinessWorld will always be there for you,” Mr. Dy Tioco said.