Woah, Obama's Youtube account

Above is Barack Obama's youtube account. Apart from the big number of subscribers and page views, there's also the "Contribute" option enabled by Google Checkout.

Moving on to a slightly different topic, here's an interesting video of a 5th grader reporter interviewing Sen. Joe Biden. The question is "What does a VP do?" Biden did an awesome job answering!

Pinoy Exchange: What a way to sell the home page

Pinoy Exchange's home page as of October 28 has this huge Nokia phone creative bordering the actual content of the site. Turns out the Nokia phone creative is a giant banner which actually leads to Nokia.com.ph

I feel Pinoy Exchange has cluttered up its page with ads. (It should emulate Google, which is also trying to squeeze more advertising $$$ from its services but in a more non-invasive way, here.)

Meanwhile, FemaleNetwork has literally placed a doormat before entering their site with an Olay advert.

I personally feel that the Female Network version is cleaner and is friendlier for the consumer, because this is quite common practice, and the consumer can choose anytime to leave the advert and go on to the main page. :) That choice is not available for the Pinoy Exchange ad.

This is an oxymoron... article about web ad clutter clearing...

It's quite funny to see an article about ad clutter clearing on the web immediately followed by an ad. :)

The actual article is here, but let me post some pertinent points:
1. web surfers are exposed to 12% fewer display-ad impressions per page view than they were a year ago (accdg to comScore) and "the economy might be the most to blame"
2. a 15% increase in ads on a page results in about a 10% decline in click-through rate
3. "As you increase clutter, the message is less likely to be conveyed."

Mentos "Power to Chews" your prize (if you win!)

(Whole JPEG is available here)

Mentos has recently come out with a mobile promo entitled "power to chews" (from power to choose). It is unique in the sense that the prize you will win actually depends on the day you send your entry.

Also, note how the promo collects the consumers' information, and also sales information. They can be communicated to at a later date, and can be used for analysis.

Mentos also has a pretty cool site, here.

Microsoft Excel music video!

Wow, this is amazing. An AC/DC music video created in Microsoft Excel. It is not a video embed within the rows and columns of Excel, but rather an ASCII music vid!

Check it out, below.

Steve Jobs reaction to Microsoft's new ad campaign

This is priceless. Steve Jobs' reaction to Microsoft's ad campaign, specifically the Bill Gates-Seinfeld ads. (I wrote about that here)

Enjoy!

Gaming can be used for marketing...

Paul Garilao recently blogged about a gaming tournament that was held at the World Trade Center in Pasay. According to him, "more than 3,000 game enthusiasts were alive and kicking as they witnessed the fierce competition of countries" in the game of Ragnarok.

It's notable that Yahoo! Philippines was a sponsor of the activity. Paul wrote, "Jojo Anonuevo, General Manager for Yahoo! Philippines, said 'gaming is also an online activity that's why Yahoo! supported it.'"

I am a fan of professional gaming. Specifically, Korean Starcraft professional gaming. It's amazing how the players are treated like star athletes (with figures like Slayers_'BoxeR', sAvior, Jaedong, Flash, etc!) It's basically like a PBA of Korea in the sense that "the Korean professional scene is currently divided into 12 teams, 11 of which are sponsored by corporations, and the other by the Korean Air Force."

I observed one fascinating instance where Pringles sponsored a Starcraft tournament. The branding was all over the place, but even more forcefully, the Pringles logo was in the map!


If you are interested to watch the entire match, you can watch it here.

How to pitch to Investors - aka Effective Presentation Skills

This is an amazing (!) talk by entrepreneur-investor David Rose on Ted, I highly recommend it.

Rose talks about how to pitch to Venture Capitalists and ultimately focuses on how to present (effectively) using a slideshow.

A key item he mentioned I think people miss out generally is that the presentation focuses on the presenter, not the presentation. I would not like to give any more spoilers, so just watch the presentation.

The secrets of success in 8 words and 3 minutes

Here is an amazing talk by Richard St John on success over at Ted.com. I found his principles very informative and practical. He tries to answer the question "What leads to success?" with 8 key words and in 3 minutes.

I also like the way BMW and Autodesk (there could be other advertisers I am not sure) advertise on this site. As you can see on the notes section, "BMW supports TED's belief in the power of ideas, and underwrites the distribution of talks on this site."

It works in a slightly similar way to Federated Media's AMEX Open Forum Blog.

Apple "I'm a Mac" ads attacking Microsoft's $300M ad campaign

Here is an interesting turn of events. Apple has just released new ads that directly attack the 300 million dollar ad campaign of Microsoft. Take a look at it yourself. It looks pretty underhanded to me, given the fact that Apple also spends a lot in advertising. Apple in my mind is always an aggressive marketer - so I felt this was coming. They would not sit idly by while Microsoft goes in with a hefty ad budget.

And here's another one, less funny but also still capable of stirring up controversy.


For some time now, Apple has been attacking Microsoft with it's "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" ads, of which this is a sample (rather, a collection).

After a pretty long time, Microsoft has rebutted Apple with its own I'm a PC ad, of which a sample is posted below:

This came right after Microsoft turned off its Bill Gates/Seinfeld ads (here-Seinfeld and Gates talking about shoes! and here-Gates and Seinfeld trying to live with a family), which was reported to be a "phase 1" of Microsoft's advertising campaign tomorrow to respond more directly to Apple's "I'm a Mac" campaign.

An interesting ad war is brewing...

Obama wins! (Marketer of the Year, beats John McCain, Apple)

Ad Age recently declared US Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama as the Marketer of the Year, beating giant Apple, online shoe seller Zappos.com, and even Republican nominee John McCain.

I've highlighted in my previous blog entry how efficient and pervasive Barack Obama's presence is on the net. Turns out that it wasn't just me who thought did an amazing job of building his own brand. I quote from Ad Age:

"I think he did a great job of going from a relative unknown to a household name to being a candidate for president," said Linda Clarizio, president of AOL's Platform A, the sponsor of the opening-night dinner attended by 750 where the votes were cast.
"I honestly look at [Obama's] campaign and I look at it as something that we can all learn from as marketers," said Angus Macaulay, VP-Rodale marketing solutions "To see what he's done, to be able to create a social network and do it in a way where it's created the tools to let people get engaged very easily. It's very easy for people to participate."
Jon Fine, marketing and media columnist for BusinessWeek, pointed to Mr. Obama's facility with engaging voters in social-media channels. "It's the fuckin' Web 2.0 thing," he said.

Seems like the only thing left for Obama is to win the election. :) It will not be easy for Obama though given the economic storm that's looming.

Lessons from thesis - "proof of concept"

Image from Silly Daddy Comics

While listening to a talk on innovation, a phrase struck me as being especially meaningful.

"proof of concept"

As with any project, we do not begin work by investing a ton of money only to find out in the end that the concept or what you had in mind is not technically feasible. Instead, we begin by doing some research, and if initial findings look positive we proceed by investing a little amount to try to come up with a prototype. It will not be industrial strength, but at least it serves to prove that the idea can be translated to reality and it actually works given real-life constraints. This then gives confidence to invest more money to build a solution for actual use.

This kind of "gating" methodology (imagine "initial findings look positive" "it actually works" as gates before you can proceed to the next step) is applicable in many scenarios. Like my undergraduate thesis. In my mind, engineering undergraduate theses are to be proofs-of-concept, not industrial strength solutions. Some of my professors back then believe wholeheartedly that our theses should be industrial-strength. Given such a background, students can not be expected to innovate. The risk is too big to create something new AND be ready for the industry. The shift from (new) idea to machine is simply too difficult to manage. So at the end of the day, people reinvent the wheel.

The same is true for digital marketing. Given the fact that internet and mobile marketing is a relatively new form of marketing, funding doesn't come easy. It is through scoring successive small victories (and managing the failures - they're surely gonna be there!) that management will realize the potential this avenue holds for the business. (I covered some of the seeming pockets of experimentation done by companies like Fab, Mead Johnson, and the amazingly entertaining Nescafe viral-TV. Not sure though if they count as victories.)

Be creative - there's always a better way!

Now here's a post that is always relevant in everything you do, and applicable no matter what your field of expertise is.

It's amazing the lessons you can learn from a 15-slide presentation :)

Enjoy!

Be Creative

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: stories islam)

A text message from Mead Johnson

I found this message in my cellphone inbox while attempting to remove old messages. A friend told me about a text campaign Mead Johnson recently had. Apparently, some people (female, mothers?) received an invitation to be part of this series of text blasts. I registered and got this message:

Msg from Globe&Mead Johnson:Ang batang ALL-AROUND HEALTHY ay mliksi, mtalino @ di sakitin.W/proper nutrition,kailangan ng calcium @ inulin para sa mbilis na pagpsok ng calcium sa buto pra sa pampalkas ng buto.2 know more text CALCIUM.Pra sa pgiging mtalino txt CHOLINE @ pra sa sakitin txt VITS & send to 2338 for FREE. Tawag sa MJ Hotline gamit ang landline (02)841-8222(MMnla)/toll free 1-800-1-888-5861 (outside MMnla). No free infotext? Reply STOP HEALTHY

I got another message approximately two weeks after:

Msg from Globe&Mead Johnson:Ang batang ALL-AROUND HEALTHY ay di sakitin, maliksi & matalino.Ang VITAMINS A,C,E ay nagbibigay lakas laban sa common na sakit(sipon&ubo).2 know more text VITS para sa pagiging maliksi, txt CALCIUM pra sa pagiging matalino, txt CHOLINE & send to 2338 for FREE.2lungan mo sya maging ALL AROUND HEALTHY twag sa MJ hotline gamit ang landline (02)841-8222(MMnla)/toll free 1-800-1-888-5861 (outside MMnla). No free infotext? Reply STOP HEALTHY

As we all know, Mead Johnson produces popular milk brands like Sustagen, Enfamil, Enfapro, Enfagrow and many others.

PS: This came before the melamine scare. Paul Richards in a 9/25 article, maintained that "Tests conducted on Mead Johnson products show no trace of Melamine contamination."

Financial mess caused by "East Coast Finance Douchebags"

This is a rather amusing presentation about the current financial debacle we are in. The quotation in the title is from the 4th slide.

Whiner Jerkins All Hands 10/13/08 - Get more Business Plans

Compare this to Sequoia's "56 slides of Doom" Pay attention to Slide 32, which shows the general decline of ad spending. TV and radio suffered the highest decline - internet is not immune though.

Sequoia Capital on startups and the economic downturn

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: depression recession)

Can a Twitter post land you in jail (or get "yes" to marriage proposall)?

Twitter is such a powerful tool because it fosters real conversations. I guess a Twitter feed can be permissible as evidence in a few years' time? :)

Another great post from Rob Cottingham.

Take a look at this: A guy recently proposed (Yes! Marriage!) to his girlfriend over Twitter! It must've been a pretty intense 18 minutes for the guy (of waiting for his girlfriend to answer)

A Twitter write-up is coming soon...

Barack Obama's online presence

Here's a pretty nice widget Barack Obama is sharing via his site (the direct link to the embeddable widget is here). It serves to show that Obama's tax cut is [3 times!] better compared to McCain.




Of interest to me is how Obama seemingly pervades so many communication channels.
CNET reported EA confirming that Obama ads are running in an in-game ad from October until Election Day in November.


Barack has spawned a lot of youtube ads, one of the more interesting vids would be the Barack Roll

There's also the Barack in 30 seconds campaign. There's many user-created videos about Obama.

I especially like Barack's Twitter profile. He has 98,000+ followers, and you can see how digital he is here:


Obama ads also appear in many sites, even supposedly neutral sites like news sites!

Barack Obama also has an iPhone app!

Lucky Me! Lid the way, winner announced

I'm really liking the design that won the Lucky Me Lid the Way competition :)


For more info, check out my earlier blog entry about this.

It's also good that Lucky Me announced the winner on their site. On a similar note, check out the winning entry for Colgate's "Colgate Fresh Confidence" contest. The prize was a commercial stint + 100, 000 pesos. I haven't seen they guy in a TV commercial yet, though.

Colgate's campaign had a viral effect, because the entrants posted the videos all over social networks, and youtube.

Blogger "superheroes"

That one was from XKCD. For more realistic info, check out Technorati's State of the Blogosphere 2008. I'd like to highlight some key notes from that report:
1. Blogs are Pervasive and Part of Our Daily Lives - 184 million WW have started a blog | 26.4 US, 346 million WW read blogs | 60.3 US, 77% of active Internet users read blogs
2. The line between blogs and mainstream media is blurring - Many mainstream news sources employ some sort of blogging (or micro-blogging, like BBC news)
3. All blogs are not created equal - This Technorati image says it best:

4. Brands "permeate the blogosphere" - in fact, "Companies are already reaching out to bloggers. One-third of bloggers have been approached to be brand advocates." "Four in five bloggers post brand or product reviews, with 37% posting them frequently. 90% of bloggers say they post about the brands, music, movies and books that they love (or hate)."

I would love to see a site like mystarbucksidea in the Philippines soon :) I think it's a souped-up blog.

Charmee Text to Gadget promo

Popular sanitary napkin brand Charmee has released a mobile marketing campaign called "Text for Gadgets"


With the economy (advertising spend forecasted to go down generally) not in good shape, promos like this would tend to be more effective because consumers get something of value in return for using their brand. Sanitary napkins are a necessity for menstruating women whether or not the economy does well, and if I am not a diehard brand loyalist, there is an incentive to shift.

Some benefits of this program would be:
1. Trial - Some women who are not brand loyalists would be enticed to try, and if they find the product good, they can be converted
2. Loyalty - Keep Charmee buyers loyal (and happy) by offering them rewards
3. Consumption - more purchases = more chances of winning :) There are quite a lot of prizes, which should be more inviting for girls to participate.
4. Communication - you can talk to your participants after the campaign is over.

Mobile marketing is an effective medium to do interactive marketing in the Philippines for a variety of reasons:
1. High penetration of mobile phones - the Philippines has 60% mobile phone penetration, that is a whopping 50-60 million population!
2. Mobile phones are very personal - many people are never too far away from their cell phones, some sleep with their phones, some use it as alarm clocks.
3. Transactions via mobile are instant - unless the messages are clogged at the telcos, a consumer can get instant rewards for something they do.
4. Highly targeted - once you have participants in your program, it is very easy to communicate to them on a one-one basis

On a side note, since I mentioned the economy in the beginning, the US economy is in such a critical condition, who do you think would be better fit to handle the economy, John McCain or Barack Obama?

Ramon Bautista, Francis M, and Nescafe

It was a few months ago when I first saw this viral video of Ramon Bautista (of "Dan Michael" fame) undergoing what he is calling "master rapper training." I found the video funny as always, because Ramon Bautista is for some reason a natural comedian. At the end of that video, seeing that Ramon is going to challenge Francis M for some sort of contest, that got me thinking there may be a part two, which I looked forward to.



Then I saw an interesting multiply blog entry from my friend Luis where I saw a Nescafe TVC featuring - you guessed it! - Francis M and Ramon Bautista! It turned out that the viral was a Nescafe-produced viral.



As you can see Ramon's clothes are the same. The details that stuck to me for both the videos was the word "listo" (alert). Master Balagtas mentioned it to Ramon during "training" (maging listo para istilo'y di mabisto - be alert so you won't give away your style) and the TVC (pa-listuhan contest)

Very nice transition - I think this viral-mainstream TVC 1-2 punch allowed Nescafe to target a niche group and the general public with a message that is very consistent. I haven't seen a Philippine company do this yet. This may well be the first, and I must say they did a great job!

And it was coupled with a very nice website! Notice the clothing of both Francis and Ramon are the same, for consistency purposes of course.
It had a quiz (a 100-item quiz! Talk about engagement) and several other features that will be activated in the coming weeks.

The viral, TVC and the website all drive home the point that Nescafe will make a person alert. Very nice messaging!

Lenovo's amazing Olympics web campaign

I came across a wonderful blog post by Lenovo VP of Global Web Marketing David Churbuck. (Yes, he blogs about his marketing executions and other thoughts). As many of you may know, Lenovo was a global partner of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. With this partnership in place, it is good sense to infuse the Olympics spirit in Lenovo's marketing. I believe that this particular execution counts as one of the best examples of social media marketing.

The big idea is simple, but let me use David's own words from his blog:
What [if] the main event were the athletes themselves? What if, using Google’s Blogger platform and YouTube capabilities, Lenovo could offer any athlete a way to share their Olympic experience with their fans, family, friends, even the world?

The background
The hackneyed strategy for Olympics sponsors, according to David, was to build an interactive program driven by a PR story or a raffle. However, for Lenovo, that was not enough: in fact, to David, it was a checklist item, not a strategy. As a "young brand seeking recognition as a global technology innovator on a global scale" David concluded that Lenovo needs more.

Note that the athletes mentioned here are not just the superstars like Michael Phelps or Shawn Johnson, but they focus more on the "normal" athlete - the no-named athlete to the media, the athlete who will not win a medal.

The execution - let me share the online components (of course, traditional media was there)
1. Equipping the athlete bloggers - To enable the athletes to blog, Lenovo gave away over 100 IdeaPad laptops and a video device. The qualification is that the athlete is passionate and a credible contender.

Chasnote reported,
Lenovo has created 100 athletes’ blogs in an attempt to align itself with some less mainstream sports, such as field hockey and modern pentathlon. It gave the athletes laptops and video cameras to chronicle their preparation for the games. We wanted to do something that shows our tech prowess, not something that uses the Web as billboard,’ said David Churbuck...

2. A microsite at http://2008.lenovo.com called the "Lenovo Olympic Podiumpowered by iGoogle gadget technology. It's basically an iGoogle page with content focused on the Olympics. As the official Lenovo blog stated,

The Podium is a highly customizable experience built on iGoogle gadget technology, where a user, once signed in, can change the appearance and layout of the page and add custom modules, or gadgets, or related content. Existing Google account holders will automatically sign in to the system The team has focused on the creation of gadgets that stream content dynamically from:

News sources

Olympic athlete bloggers – we’re recruiting more than 100 athletes to blog on our new IdeaPad line of notebooks

Map interfaces using mashups of Google Maps and the Olympic Torch Relay route and the Beijing Olympic venues

YouTube videos related to the Games

Picasa photos from the Games

3. A Facebook campaign that allows people to identify with their countries, check medal tallies, and read blogs of athletes. It's shown strong success: downloaded more than 200,000 times.
Facebook allows for a wide spectrum of branded activity. On one end, you can just go for simple banner ads that can reach many people (impressions) but will have very little interactivity. Or one can create a specialized application that has high engagement and equity but will only reach very few people. I feel Lenovo has done amazing in this aspect, managing to hit it somewhere in the middle, with high reach and also high engagement. From an equity standpoint, it showed Lenovo's tech prowess (they enabled the athletes to blog). Also, this campaign has generated a lot of buzz (this blog is an example! and months after the 8/8/08!)

I believe it is hard to outdo what Lenovo did, but this shows the potential of partnering with well-recognized activities.

The youtubevertorial

With the massive amount of views Youtube gets every day, adding a small helpful button on the site to facilitate some sort of purchase transaction can boost its revenues. Enter the youtubevertorial:

See the "download this song" link in the bottom? It has links to purchase the song via Amazon or iTunes!

Right now, this is for games and songs. But obviously there is potential for this, even for something as bland as consumer products! I for instance would put links to sampling pages.

Check out the official Google blog for more info. I post an excerpt below:

When you view a YouTube video with a great soundtrack, you often see comments from YouTube users asking about the name of the song and where they can download it. Or when users watch the trailer for an upcoming video game, they want to know when it will be released and where they can buy it.

Today, we're taking our first steps to providing YouTube users with this kind of instant gratification, by adding "click-to-buy" links to the watch pages of thousands of YouTube partner videos. Click-to-buy links are non-obtrusive retail links, placed on the watch page beneath the video with the other community features. Just as YouTube users can share, favorite, comment on, and respond to videos quickly and easily, now users can click-to-buy products -- like songs and video games -- related to the content they're watching on the site. We're getting started by embedding iTunes and Amazon.com links on videos from companies like EMI Music, and providing Amazon.com product links to the newly-released video game Spore(TM) on videos from Electronic Arts.

The blog is dead...

Blogging is dead, and "lifestreaming" is in.

I found a very nice presentation that talks this by Yong Fook, founder of opensourcefood and project lead of Sweetcron.

He says that 66% of blogs are dead and majority of what's existing now are commercial blogs. He points to several things:

• Blogging has matured (Think Techcrunch or Robert Scoble's blog)
  
• "More distractions (Think youtube, flickr, social networks, the whole array! And my favorite, Kongregate)
• Short attention span of people (How long do people stay on a site before clicking away anyway?)

Because of these, Yong Fook introduces the "lifestream"which basically pulls activity from many sites and conveniently shows them in one place. Examples would be Friendfeed and Sweetcron.

I see this as the general trend towards Web3.0: of being able to get all sorts of stuff from all sorts of places and aggregating them together. Popular services will be open and people can use the APIs freely to empower their own sites and make things easier for the site visitors (this may be hard for corporate sites). It will also make much use of new capabilities like geo-locating (Mozilla just released Geode!).

With that being said, let me share his entertaining presentation!

The Blog is Dead!

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: social activity)

Pepsi's consumer-centric strategy and reapplication

From my previous Pepsi blog entry, I mentioned that Pepsi is focusing on digital marketing. From this wonderful source, Harry Hui, Pepsi’s chief marketer for China said that Pepsi's global strategy is to become consumer-centric. Hui elaborated that for Pepsi's marketing direction, "the overall move is from Brand centric to consumer centric; projective to engaging; static to customized experiences; episodic contact to each communication is a link to the next; one-way to viral and community enabling."

They engaged the Chinese consumers by focusing on their target market's passions: music, sports and interactive.

I present two case studies from the same source. I have personal knowledge of the first one, but none about the second one - and it also surprised me. :)

1. Create an ad
Proximity (a digital marketing agency) presented during the IMMAP (Internet and Mobile Marketing Association of the Philippines) that in China, Pepsi ran a "create your own Pepsi commercial" contest.

Consumers create a script with actor Jay Chou as the main character. Then consumers choose the winner. The campaign was basically a website execution. the same source above revealted the contest stats. Amazing numbers:

• 28,000 scripts received
• 690,000 bulletin board posting
• 5 million online participation/votes

The winning ad is here:


2. Appear on a can!
Pepsi China also ran an "appear on a can" contest. Same mechanics as the Philippine execution. As Hui elegantly put it, "we wanted to create youtube on a can."

The China stats were:

• 3 million photos submitted
• 163 million votes
• 7.5 million bulletin board messages
• Pepsi also managed to get many celebrity endorsements for free, since they wanted to appear on the can.

It's quite amazing to see Pepsi rolling out the "appear on a can" initiative in the Philippines. Will we see the "create an ad" campaign soon?

Pepsi 'kada can: Be on the next Pepsi can

kada-can or kadacan is derived from two words: Kada from Barkada (meaning a group of close friends in English) while can stands for "Pepsi can." You guessed it right: Pepsi is holding a big user-generated content contest where the winners will adorn the next Pepsi can.


The mechanic is that a barkada needs to go to Pepsi Kada can booths, and bring an unopened Pepsi product to have their pictures taken for free inside the booth. They can also upload their pictures via Pepsi's website.

People can vote via text messaging or via the website. Then the really cool thing is: Barkadas with the most votes will be on the next Pepsi can! There are also other prizes for People's choice and other winners.

I see two interesting things related to this:
1. A few months ago, Pepsi also ran a mobile campaign where every hour, a lucky person can win an iPod by texting in the code found in every Pepsi can to a mobile shortcode.
2. Lucky Me is also having a "be on our next product" contest via its "Lid the way" contest.

It seems to me that Pepsi is focused on digital marketing initiatives. They have also won some awards in last year's IMMAP (Internet and Mobile Marketing Association of the Philippines). I present an analysis about this in my next entry.

Social Media for Marketers

Funny Post from Social Signal:

You would be entertained to see this presentation, look particularly at Slide 6:

Branding 2.0 & Social Media

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: marketing media)

Lucky Me! Lid the way

Lucky me's "Lid the way" is a nice contest, promoted aggressively over the radio and out-of-home like billboards. The radio ad sounded hip, and it was the first time I heard a radio commercial bringing so much attention to the URL itself. There was even a short spiel saying "Lid-the-way-dot-com. L-I-D yan a (It's L-I-D)" since "lid" obviously can be mistaken as "lead."

(Although we can argue - why talk about saving the Earth when the plastic containers of Lucky me are non-biodegradable?)

When the site was newly introduced, the same radio ad played when the site first loads, but now the site has been revised, containing the finalists of the competition. There are some pretty nice submissions!

Obviously this contest can be done offline. But making contests such as this online has many advantages to my mind:

- Empower the consumer/creator
Somehow, seeing your work recognized and published serves to boost a person's ego. This will tie in to the viral component below: when a person sees his or her work posted, he or she will tell friends to visit it as well. If it is really good, these friends will also forward to other friends.

- Probability to go Viral
This is always best, because you reach people for free! People in the Philippines would probably link or mention the site in their social networks like Friendster, Multiply, Facebook, or discuss it in forums. However, this is something that can not be greatly influenced. Because bad news can also spread virally (take for example, the Dell "burning laptop" viral image below, taken from this source)

- Increased awareness for people who visit the site
For the people who were reached by the viral, they will also get the message that the product is trying to convey to them.