Marketing below the line

In the span of four years, Multimedia Exponents had moved from a P5,000 a month rented apartment behind the Social Security System to an eight-storey building in Makati which it owns. The below-the-line marketing company has been Makati-based for the past three years.

"With the economic slowdown in the last six years, the cost of above-the-line marketing such as advertising has become extremely expensive. Below-the line or BTL marketing has become more popular," said vice-president for finance Arman Malabanan.

Multimedia currently has four independent and revenue generating divisions:

• Events Circuits, which handles corporate events, conferences, conventions, product launches, mall shows, bar tours, music roadshows, sports events, competitions, trade exhibits and seminars;

• Ad Aurum, which does liaison and networking work directed at professionals, consumers and institutions such as professional marketing, corporate events management, co-marketing, sports marketing, and music marketing;

• Craft Promotion, which induces or boosts sales by organizing raffle and games, merchandizing programs and blitzes, trial generation activities, trade marketing programs, and sales promotions; and

• Resource Net, which provides marketing logistics such as axis designs and displays, a mobilization and deployment center, and a multi-media production center.

"Each of the divisions has its own staff. Human resources and finances of the four divisions are, however, centralized in MME," said human resources head Niles Jordan Bries.

Loose Change

Malabanan and Bries were part of a group of five University of the Philippines students tapped by the UP administration to organize fund-raising rock concerts in the early 1990s.

"We came from different colleges but we hit it off because we were all creative in marketing products and services," said Bries, a research associate at UP and a two-time Palanca awardee for essay. "We looked at these projects as rackets to earn some money for personal use. When most of us finished schooling in 1996, we decided to make our partnership more permanent."

Other co-founders of MME are Carlo Belleza, Robin Bernabe, and Adette Guevarra.

"Our first big account was Johnson & Johnson, which hired us on a per project contract. There was a time when we rented a P15,000 condominium unit right in front of the J&J plant in Paranaque so we could service them better," said Malabanan.

Expertise

Today, most of MME’s clients come from advertising agencies whose expertise is above- the-line.

"While many agencies have built-in BTL services, they still come to us to do some of the dirty like setting up a kiosk and direct personal marketing," said Bries.

MME supplies clients with a catalog of available BTL services.

"The catalog serves not just as a guide for present services that MME wants to undertake for the clients but also informs the clients on the complete line of services that we can do for them in the future," said budget officer Carlo Belleza.

"As much as possible, we do not want clients coming to us and telling us to concentrate on events because another company is doing the networking or mall set-up. We do not want piecemeal work. We want to give clients a complete line of service," said vice-president for external affairs Buddy Lopa, a former broadcaster who merged his own company into MME about two years ago.

Looking forward, the company is eyeing Southeast Asian markets such as Bangkok where it can access the expatriate network of many Filipino artists and copywriters, who had been hired for whopping compensations in the last five years.