Karl Marx had it wrong when he said that religion is the opiate of the masses – it’s television. And if that is true, then us advertisers are the cartel ringleaders who have bastardized the medium’s initial intent of broadcasting a diverse range of world-spanning content into a swamp of marketing messages and branding initiatives.
Manny Villar certainly knows this fact just as well as any Brand Manager – he has not only embraced the platform of television advertising, but has invested heavily into re-envisioning himself into a larger-than-life Brand rather than a simple Human Being.
It’s amazing to see the resources he has at his disposal. MDJ Superstar recently spotted a Nielsen report detailing the Top 20 advertisers for the year 2009, based on rate card prices*.
2009 Rate Card, amount estimated in billions of Philippine pesos.
At the top of the list are the usual fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) suspects – Unilever, P&G, Nestle, Unilab, and Colgate-Palmolive, the Big Five who have collectively poured in over PhP64-billion worth of advertising investments.
Secondary players such as URC, Selecta, Del Monte, and Kraft Foods have demonstrated tremendous double-digit growth (and, in Selecta’s case, triple-digit growth) in advertising spend in 2009, leapfrogging such traditional powerhouses as McDonald’s and San Miguel, both of whom are nowhere to be found on this list.
But truly, although he brings up the rear of the Top 20 advertisers in 2009, the sheer volume of Manny Villar’s spend is shocking.
PhP1.3-billion.
One point three billion pesos.
Put into concrete terms, that would be enough money to purchase two 8-ounce bottles of Coke for every single individual in the Philippines, or a Honda Civic for each of the 1,497 municipalities nationwide. It’s an amount worth more than the Houston Rockets’ superstar guard Tracy McGrady’s 2009-2010 NBA contract, or roughly equivalent to the combined 2009 estimated GDP of Tuvalu and Niue.
It’s astonishing that a single individual could have earned that much money in his lifetime. Perhaps he really is an incredibly astute businessman; but then again any real businessman worth his salt knows that you spend money to make more money.
Kind of makes you wonder how he intends to recoup his investment…
Invest in a White Hat franchise, maybe?
* For those of you not familiar with media buying, “rate card” refers to the standardized rates published by the media networks for a standard commercial spot, although depending on negotiation skills and volume commitments, certain large advertisers may secure massive discounts off of rate card – therefore actual money paid out by each advertiser could theoretically be 50-60% lower than what is listed here.
