Publicis Groupe Philippines helps empower SMEs

MANILA, Philippines — Market studies show that Filipinos have turned to online shopping during the pandemic (57percent increase as of the 3rd quarter of 2020), and point to the fact that many small businesses were negatively impacted due to the lack of access to the market.

In an effort to help struggling small and medium enterprises (SMEs) reach a wider market, Publicis Groupe Philippines started Project Lion Cub, a build-operate-transfer e-commerce solution that enables SMEs, in collaboration with various platform partners, to quickly adapt to the digital normal of doing business.

Under the Publicis Groupe Power of One platform, a multi-disciplinary task force across the entire Groupe network of creatives, strategy teams, e-commerce and social specialists from Digitas, as well as Publicis media was formed, and a plan was crafted to help a variety of micro and small social enterprises who supported different communities. The goal was to help set up their e-commerce stores, optimize their digital presence, and create social campaigns to boost awareness. The team worked closely with Lazada and Facebook which gave technical support and media credits.

Lion Cub selects SMEs based on the type of social enterprise, its scale, and level of technology and talent to work with. In the long-run, Lion Cub aims to scale this model/approach to include the development of packaged direct-to-consumer solutions, potentially with the additional participation of financial and logistics partners.

Two brands have been launched so far, with the Publicis Groupe team designing optimized flagship stores, and creating campaigns to drive the market to the stores.

The first brand is The Soap Farm, a company that works with a community of women in Quezon province producing handcrafted soaps that use all-natural, locally-sourced ingredients.

The second Lazada flagship store and campaign launched was for GW by Great Women, a brand that has collaborated with designers like Christian Louboutin but is now struggling to find a market at this time.

The Publicis Groupe Lion Cub team is currently working to help more social enterprise brands gain their footing on the booming e-commerce platform.