‘Bring out the Barney’

At quick glance, you will not exactly know what a leading Filipino web portal like Yehey! has in common with a top fashion magazine, the country’s largest sport store chain, a fat-burning fruit juice, a string of crab-concept restaurants, mobile services for overseas Filipino workers, and a growing cosmetics line.

Until you get to talk to Donald Patrick L. Lim, president and CEO of Yehey!

Not yet in his mid-thirties, Lim already joins the ranks of successful and innovative entrepreneurs and outstanding brand builders under the age of 35 who were recently recognized at the 3rd Young Market Masters Awards (YMMA) organized by Mansmith and Fielders, Inc. of noted marketing guru Josiah L. Go.

Despite the early achievement in his young, decade-long career in the field of marketing, the architect behind the ‘reloaded’ and reengineered Yehey.com remains humble.

“Yehey! was never a marketing phenomenon – not before, and not even now, admits its president/CEO, who is also the founder and president of the Internet and Mobile Marketing Association of the Philippines (IMMAP). “We are still in the process of making it a superior marketing product. However, we have managed to transform the entire Yehey Corporation from a technology company to a spanking online marketing firm. From our people to our process, the entire Teamyehey now breathes and speaks marketing.”

Lim confesses his initial reluctance to take up a marketing course. In his speech at the YMMA awarding ceremonies, he said marching orders from his mother and a mentor’s advice were the simple yet practical reasons behind his forced entry into the field.

“Marketing is all about being able to sell. I have learned that a good marketer can sell to people things they don’t need. An excellent marketer can sell to people what they don’t want,” he says. And “with so many products that are no good,” Lim says his mentor assured him he would never be jobless in the field.

Being father to a two-year old daughter and a year-old son exposed him a great deal about the power of marketing. “I did not have enough choice but to get introduced to the world of Barney,” he says. He marveled at how even Barney non-believers like him got entrapped to shell out a hefty sum to sit for hours and watch the purple dinosaur sing his popular “I love you, you love me” ditty at the Araneta Coliseum.

“I should learn from Barney,” he says. The lethal combination of aggressive and subtle promotional marketing, word-of-mouth, and “pester power,” he says, transformed the purple dinosaur into Hollywood hero stature.

While his own Yehey! is not exactly singing “I love you, you love me” all the way to the bank, Lim says the Filipino Internet portal has unleashed its own lethal combination of having team talent, a winning mindset and aggressive marketing. Yehey! recently launched its own rewards system and its version of Yahoo! Answers (Pinoy Henyo) and Yahoo! Messenger (Yehey! TOL).

Soon, the portal will also introduce its own virtual world called Dangka and the local version of Youtube. It is also at the forefront of creating online marketing campaigns and websites of several companies.

All these efforts, Lim says, are all geared towards making Yehey! a marketing great. “Marketing is not as easy as it looks nor as difficult as it seems. In the end, it is all about passion, bringing out the Barney in you, and wanting to make a difference,” he adds.