RFM reloaded: We love kids

Listed food giant RFM Corp. celebrates its 45th anniversary today as a fully-reloaded branded-food enterprise, with a renewed sense of purpose aptly captured in its tagline, RFM: We love kids.

Founded in 1958 as the Philippines’ first flour milling company, RFM has evolved through the years from a commodity-based and agri-business producer to a huge industrial conglomerate involved in everything from food to property, electronics, banking and other businesses.

In the wake of the Asian crisis in 1997, RFM has had to dispose of some of its varied businesses to strengthen its financial position, including eventually the sale of its highly-popular softdrinks subsidiary, Cosmos Bottling Corp.

In the process, RFM has focused its efforts to consolidate its standing as one of the country’s respected experts in the manufacturing and marketing of fast-moving branded food and beverage products.

Today, at 45 years, RFM stands strongly with an array of powerful brands for the consumer market: White King hotcakes, rice-based mixes and sauces; Fiesta Pasta, Sunkist ready-to-drink and powdered juice drinks, Aqua Blue mineral water, Selecta Moo milk drinks, Selecta ice cream, Swift Mighty Meaty and Sweet N Juicy hotdogs, Swift Juicy corned beef and many more.

In all its enterprise-rebuilding efforts, RFM has rediscovered the basic theme that has run through many years of developing products for the Filipino consumer: Its concern for the well-being of children. RFM has not only been making food and beverage products that children enjoy, or sponsoring youth-oriented sports events and social development programs. RFM has been building upon a core Filipino value: It is in our nature to love our kids.

As conceptualized by RFM president and CEO Joey Concepcion, the RFM theme is now "RFM: We love kids."

He explained that "for a long time, our tag-line was ‘RFM: Raising the Quality of Food for the Filipino.’ It’s a good commitment, but I had always been looking for something with a more personal and meaningful connection. Thinking about what RFM has really been doing for people led me to see that its real focus has really been on kids – what they need, what they want, what they enjoy."

Being a family man himself with four children, Joey Concepcion centered on the basic idea that love is a commitment to always try to do one’s best.

"At RFM, ‘We love kids’ is first of all, a commitment to quality in all the products we make available. It is also a commitment to innovate our products in ways that will make children healthier and happier. Even in our ads, we feature only those who can serve as good role models for kids," he said.

RFM’s commitments outside the business has also tended towards the well-being and development of children. The company continues to be the major proponent in the annual search for the Ten Outstanding Students of the Philippines (TOSP) as well as the outreach programs of the Laura Vicuna Foundation for Street Children. In sports, RFM is well known for its support of basketball clinics and other training programs for children.

"As parents, as mothers and fathers, we would never give our kids something that may be bad for them. We will always try to give them the best that we can, whatever our station in life," Concepcion explained.

That is the aspiration that RFM has now captured in its new them as it marks its 45th year – RFM: We love kids.