Earlier this year, Mansmith and Fielders, Inc. received the Agora Distinction Award for Nation-Building Marketing Leadership from the Philippine Marketing Association (PMA). The recognition was unexpected and humbling. As the first private company to receive it in PMA’s 70-year history, it reminded us that our work has always been guided by purpose. Purpose in marketing doesn’t only strengthen a business, […]
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Marketers know the secret to loyalty: trust. Whether it’s a brand and its customers, a leader and a team, or a government and its citizens, trust drives engagement. Imagine if tax systems applied the same principle. Rethinking the Tax Experience For many entrepreneurs, taxes feel like a yearly hurdle: forms, rules, and the constant worry of penalties. The system often […]
Love makes people notice your brand. Trust makes them stay. Yet many companies chase “brand love” as if it were the endgame, pouring budgets into viral campaigns, celebrity tie-ups, and grand launches. But affection built on hype is fragile. One crisis, one bad review, one broken promise. and that love vanishes. In the Philippines, this distinction matters even more. Filipino […]
Dear Fellow Filipino, We are often described as the world’s most resilient people: smiling through hardship, laughing in traffic, finding light in the dark. The world admires that optimism. But perhaps we must now ask: have we learned to survive so well that we’ve forgotten how to transform? What worked for us before may hold us back now. When we […]
Public awareness around corruption and social justice is at an all-time high across much of Asia, including the Philippines. Wealth and power, once flaunted without question, are now being cast in a more critical light. For years, social media made ostentatious displays of wealth feel routine. Few questioned the sources of that luxury, and many influencers posted without considering the […]
If you’ve been watching the Philippines recently, you’ve likely noticed two powerful forces rising in parallel: civic protests demanding change and startups pushing for innovation. One speaks the language of activism, the other of disruption. But at their core, both are movements, fueled by belief, powered by people, and born from frustration with the status quo. I recently joined the […]
In my adult life, my curiosity about trust deepened when, at 17, I made a costly mistake. I hired the wrong family driver, based on appearance and a neatly written biodata, without doing any background check. On his first day, he carnapped our car. Fortunately, the police later recovered it in Santa Maria, Bulacan. Looking back, that incident revealed my […]
How do Filipino brands break through the noise and build lasting loyalty in a culture where urgency and ritual coexist? The answer lies in two deeply symbolic marches that shape the Filipino experience: the urgent protest and the enduring pilgrimage. One is loud and immediate, the other slow and reverent. Together, they offer not only insight into the Filipino psyche […]
Years ago, a marketing manager approached me and asked, “Sir Josiah, how do we market trust when people already assume the worst of us?” It was a question I had no quick answer for; and I’ve always believed that important questions deserve more than quick answers. It was not a question about branding, not really. It was a question about […]
In the Trust Economy, marketing is no longer just about promoting value, it’s about living it. As we introduced last Friday in the discussion on the Trust Economy Flywheel, today’s Filipino consumers and citizens are reevaluating what they expect from brands and institutions. This follow-up zooms in on one critical principle: Cultural Literacy (Principle #2). At stake is not just […]