Marketing columns usually focus on positioning, differentiation, and shareholder value. This Valentine’s Day, I want to talk about brand equity, not in the marketplace, but at home. It’s where I learned the true meaning of trust long before I began teaching it. Before my wife, Chiqui, became my partner in life, she was my first early adopter. She saw intrinsic value […]
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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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
As Mansmith and Fielders, Inc. marks its 35th year, we find ourselves both humbled by how far we’ve come and energized by what lies ahead. What started as an intimate seminar company has grown into an ecosystem, one built on education, empowerment, and public service. Our mission has remained constant: to help people and organizations grow! We’ve always believed that […]
We’re often seduced by data. Charts, dashboards, surveys, and analytics seem like the ultimate way to understand customers. But data alone won’t give you the full picture. It lacks context, can be incomplete or biased, and doesn’t explain the why behind behaviors. Human judgment and interpretation are essential to turn raw data into meaningful insights and decisions. To truly grasp […]
A few years ago, a new tech company entered the market with full confidence. The plan looked perfect on paper, but failed within months. Why? An IT programmer had spotted a critical flaw in the program but was told to just fix it and stay silent, afraid to contradict leadership who committed a date to launch publicly. Too many companies […]
Imagine your leadership team sailing smoothly through calm waters, until an unexpected iceberg strikes. The forecasts were solid. The numbers were sound. Yet beneath the surface, something far more insidious was at play: distorted risk perception. That iceberg? Cognitive bias: sharp, hidden, and often unseen until it’s too late. Organizations rarely fail because of risks they saw coming. More often, […]
Every year, leadership teams go on offsite session. They treat strategic planning as a routine like Holy Week: leadership retreats, planning decks, team meetings, and then, boom, “new” strategy. But take a closer look, and it’s often last year’s plan repackaged in fresher bubble wrap. They churn out the latest buzzwords “story selling”, “agility,” “ecosystem,” “digital first”, but nothing changes […]
Most companies today are stuck in what’s called a Red Ocean, a marketplace filled with intense competition, where businesses offer similar products and fight over the same customers. Coined by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, the term describes the bloodied waters of saturated markets, where everyone’s trying to take a bigger slice of an already shrinking pie. Here, the […]