Excellence: The foremost currency in the Agora

MANILA, Philippines - On the adobe wall of fame at C’s, an Italian restaurant in Clark, Pampanga whose panizza inspires two-hour road trips from Manila, rests an autographed plate by Blen Fernando.

Different plates inscribed with dedications of celebrities cover the wall, but Blen isn’t even in show business. She’s the vice president for marketing of Alaska Milk Corp.

C’s wanted Blen’s autograph after recognizing her from the news as the 2009 Agora Awardee on Marketing Management, which was published the same day she and her staff happened to dine in the restaurant. To this day, Blen questions her celebrity status. She insists her marketing services manager must have put them up to it.

“When C’s manager handed me an empty plate and pen, I didn’t know what to do,” Blen says.

“I asked if they were kidding me.”

The real question is: Why shouldn’t professional excellence be a measure of distinction, when it has become so necessary yet so rare in our society?

The Agora Award is the highest honor that could be bestowed in the Philippines for achievements in the marketing profession. It is an offspring of the Philippine Marketing Association (PMA), a non-profit organization established in 1954 to promote integrity in the marketing industry.

Versatility, innovativeness and ingenuity are the necessary prerequisites of an Agora Award, but to be worthy of it one must not only have demonstrated excellence in managing a brand, he or she must also have contributed to the betterment of the greater marketing industry.

The Agora Award has been the absolute standard of excellence in the industry for more than 30 years because it isn’t attained in a single moment of success – by an increase in market share or by hitting the target sales growth for a said year. It demands commitment to the continual growth of a brand as well as to the social and business environment in which marketing is practiced.

Blen is almost on her 17th year with Alaska, and hopes to do even more in her profession especially after receiving the Agora Award.

“I feel it’s opened new doors and responsibilities,” she says.

Starting out as group brand manager, then marketing manager, and climbing up to marketing director and finally to vice president for marketing, Blen took on the mounting responsibilities that came with the growing Alaska brand.

“Every marketing person is like a general manager, that’s how we look at things,” Blen says.

“Your main concern is, of course, marketing. But you can’t be myopic. You have to be able to look at what are the issues of concern, what are the positive things in other departments and make sure you work with them.

“Alaska really works under the value of teamwork. So all of us we make sure that we integrate our thoughts and ideas. It just makes things more efficient and better organized when all of us have one direction.”

There was sure to be new challenges for Alaska after it branched out from its mother company and became a publicly listed corporation in 1997. By 2001, Blen was offered the position of marketing director.

“The president at the time, Fred (Uytengsu), asked me if I wanted the responsibility,” she recalls.

“We were already a public company and we were getting ready to move to the next generation of Alaska in crossing over from 2000 to the new millennium. There was a new mindset and new things to do.

“I was given the chance to chart the destiny of the company. Of course I accepted!”

Along the way, Blen found time to delve into the industry’s concerns, such as self-regulation and content regulation. In her office as Advertising Content and Regulation Committee (ACRC) technical sub-committee chair in 2007, Blen is noted to have put every advertiser’s claim to the test – no content was approved without substantiation and evidence.

She was also instrumental in setting up the Ad Standards Council (ASC) as the new screening body of advertising content under a tripartite agreement with the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster sa Pilipinas (KBP), the Association of Accredited Advertising Agencies (4As) and the Philippine Association of National Advertisers (PANA).

The sort of career Blen has built for herself is as much rooted on her conviction in the Alaska brand as it is to giving back to the industry that has enriched her own life for nearly two decades.

“A lot of my work is about creating demand for nutrition and sports, a healthy lifestyle and positive values,” she says.

“Nutrition is total – it’s not just diet and exercise. It’s practicing a positive, healthy lifestyle.”

Receiving the Agora Award is not the end of the line for her. It is rather the beginning of a new frontier.

As a marketing professional, Blen perceives how marketing has the potential to affect education and nation building in positive ways. She is always eager to share best practices as guest lecturer in universities in Manila and the provinces, and hopes industry experts would also take part in marketing education in spite of their busy work schedules, even through teaching short courses.

“Our educational system is very theoretical, it needs input from practitioners,” Blen says.

While learning about good marketing practices prepares the next generation of professionals for a healthy exercise, Blen believes the industry has the capacity to change lives for the better – right now.

“Marketing can do a lot of things to promote small business growth and entrepreneurship,” she says.

“Small business is the backbone of our country.

“At Alaska, we encourage new businesses that can sell our products. We also encourage backyard businesses like halo-halo stalls and food stalls so a family could augment their income.”

The Agora Award was presented to Blen in tribute to professional excellence in the marketing industry, but perhaps more so for the intention behind her work.

“Early in life I needed to do things that were creative, with big concepts and big ideas and to be able to put them into flesh,” she says.

“I wanted to be able to influence behavior positively.”

When Blen was handed an empty plate to autograph at C’s, she gave it back full of hopes and dreams that go beyond the Alaska brand. She seeks to use the marketing profession as a vehicle for social and economic development.

That plate doesn’t hang on the wall for vanity. It stands for a resolution to do better precisely because Blen won the Agora. She’s right: she’s not a celebrity. Blen is a visionary.