A few years ago, I was one of the plenary speakers of the Philippine Center for Entrepreneurship’s Go Negosyo Youth Summit. Let me share the five highlights of my talk on “Grow from Failures” where I talked about many business failures from my early days, some of which I also wrote in my book “The WE Entrepreneur”. 1. I was 23 years […]
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Q1: You became the first Asian President of the World Marketing Association a few years ago and you have made Asia proud. How has the role of marketing in the Asian region then and now evolved at an international level? In the last decade, we can see that the role of marketing is evolving so rapidly in the Asia. In […]
Author / co-author of 16 bestselling marketing books Contemporary Marketing Strategy in the Philippine Setting (1992) Marketing Mix Strategy in the Philippine Setting (1993) The Marketing Mentors (1993) Marketing 101: An A to Z Guide (1994) Marketing Plan: Building The Profitable Preferred Brand (1997 & 2012 2nd edition) Marketing Excellence in Good Times and Bad (1998, co-edited with Dr. Ned […]
Strategy does not fail in execution first. It fails in logic. What usually happens is this: teams build something that looks coherent on paper, defensible in meetings, and impressive in presentations, only to discover later that coherence is not the same as structural validity. At that point, execution is no longer strategy. It is recovery. And recovery is always more […]
After more than 30 years of advising business owners, leadership teams, and organizations, one pattern remains remarkably consistent: strategies rarely fail because of execution. We like to blame execution because it is a visible, actionable scapegoat. It suggests the team simply lacked the “hustle” or the incentives weren’t sharp enough. But the truth is more structural. Strategies fail because of […]
For decades, Tang has dominated the powdered beverage category in the Philippines. Leadership, however, does not guarantee immunity from change. Markets evolve. Consumers evolve. Categories fragment. I sat down with Mondelēz International in the Philippines’ Managing Director Aleli Arcilla, recently conferred an honorary Mansmith Sales Masters Award, to discuss Tang’s strategic reset for 2026. Q1: Let me begin with an […]
Early in my career, I had a routine that I valued deeply. Whenever our schedules allowed, I would ask Dr. Ned Roberto—the legendary marketing research guru who at one time served as our Vice Chair at Mansmith and Fielders—to sit in the back of my seminar. My request was simple: Audit my logic, find the cracks, and give me a […]
The Philippines remains Asia’s Catholic heartland, yet the number of people attending Sunday Mass has plummeted from 64% in 1991 to just 38% today. I call this the “Barabbas Moment.“ In the biblical narrative, the crowd was given a choice between the radical, transformative Truth and the immediate, violent “fix” of the insurrectionist Barabbas. They chose the tactic over the transformation. Today, […]
This is the final installment of the leadership series (following The Pilate Trap, The Caiaphas Trap, and The Judas Trap). While earlier archetypes examined institutional and strategic breakdowns, the Peter Trap focuses on a more subtle failure: the internal collapse of execution under pressure, and the rare pathway to recovery. In executive leadership, intent is rarely the issue. Leaders articulate vision, values, and […]
In an era of peak consumer skepticism, the gap between a brand’s public image and its internal reality has never been more scrutinized. For a household giant like NutriAsia, maintaining leadership with icons like Silver Swan, Datu Puti, and UFC requires more than market share—it requires a self-sustaining Trust Flywheel: Humility, Cultural Literacy, Empathy, Transparency, Authenticity, Consistency, and Accountability. While […]