Dear Oscar

Another pillar of Philippine PR has passed away. Oscar S. Villadolid (seated, left, in photo) died last week at the age of 79. His friends knew that for Oscar, who had been ailing, it was just a matter of time.

 His friends and admirers in PR, journalism, and public  service mourn his passing. For Oscar was a gentleman, a  journalist, a writer, and PR practitioner of far- reaching accomplishments. Oscar was a prime mover in Philippine PR's pioneering role in the promotion of corporate social responsibility.

Oscar was the only one among  PR practitioners in the country who got as far as serving as Ambassador, to the Holy See at that. He was also among the earliest TOYM (Ten Outstanding Young Men) awardees (for Journalism, 1963). 

He reached a career pinnacle in Philippine PR practice, Senior Vice President of PR, of San Miguel Corporation, which he served  for many years. He was President of the Public Relations Society of the Philippines  (PRSP) and gave it flair and distinction.  He was a successful man of  abiding humility and complete lack of airs. He was always willing to help.

I liked Oscar  as a writer, and thoroughly enjoyed reading his book on World War II, about how he and his family survived it. As a columnist, he was tops as a commentator on foreign affairs.

Oscar's beautiful summa cum laude wife, Alice, and their family, are now bereaved of the love and care of this kind compassionate man.  As we, his colleagues in PR, also are.  We looked up to him, and learned from him that a PR person can rise so high and  accomplish big things but stay true and humble, faithful to his role as a family man and a leader in his chosen profession. 

PR "Prescriptions" for Would- Be Presidents

Candidates for President in the 2010 elections in the Philippine will find it harder this time. I mean, harder than just   presenting  their lonesome selves, and waiting for the votes to come in. Voters will be be more demanding of their candidates, and dismissive of those who will offer not much more than their names.

For those who will market and promote Candidates, including PR managers, the following may be helpful.

1. Popularity still does count, but will not be enough. Easy recall and recognizability may  push the Candidate up front, but that is just the beginning. Candidates will have to traverse a lot of ground before they  get the vote.

2. A great number of voters are young, and many of them disdain popularity and lack of depth, and popularity and glibness, for they  suspect here weakness of principles.

3. Issues are fine, but what issues are really important, and which ones will connect to the voter,  and to which voter? How strongly will your Candidate "connect" with the issues? Often those who insist on "issues" themselves sidestep issues because they really would rather go on with it fast, depending on their high-recall names.

4. Spending a lot of money, or pretending that you have a lot of it to burn, can be counterproductive.  Old and new voters get the impression that profligate candidates themselves believe  that voters can be bought, and these are not be trusted.

5.  Candidates are not products, but people. Candidates  must be able to think, reason out, express and defend  what they believe in and explain to the voters how will they preserve and enhance the republic, serve our people and help keep their freedom and win their prosperity.

6. Voters expect  top-calibre Candidates to choose from, those with high intelligence, proven leadership,  commitment to the public good, and willingness to sacrifice. The day of the buffoons, I fear, is over. Voters know that in spite of the setbacks  that  the country  have had to go through, it is intact, and is in many ways  better and stronger than it used to.  And its next President had better keep it being that.

7.  Candidates are for our people, but it would be nice if we had a President who can with vision, presence and accomplishments be speaking to the rest of the world as well, and gain more respect for our country.

Let us do away wit buffoons and types that we would wish we did not have anything to do about.

8.  Voters will demand from Candidates  respect and due consideration for their intelligence, and the fact that they, our Voters,  work hard for what they believe will be best for their country.

9. Show us how you see our country and what you plan, with our help, to make of  it. Be open, be communicative,  and be truthful. If, in doing so, you blunder or feel you have made a fool of yourself, admit it, explain and go on. Voters have more intelligence and sophistication than you may credit them with.

10. Show us who you really are, because whether you do or don't we will see, anyway. If you do that, and you fail to make it, that wouldn't be so bad, for there are other ways of serving our country than being President.

San Juan, San Juan!

It took just one wedding, but of two of the country's most popular showbiz celebs,  for my father's hometown to land on the front pages, and on prime time news on TV. 

Judy Ann Santos and Ryan Agoncillo got married recently in the San Juan Nepomuceno Church, town of San Juan, in Batangas, and that's all it took. The town is not yet quite Taal, or Batangas City, in terms of popularity, but people at least have taken notice. Where Juday and Ryan could choose to get married must have something about it.

And does San Juan have it. It has Laiya, that beautiful coast of scores of beach resorts, of white sands, a marine life sanctuary, facilities for boating,  diving and snorkeling,  and excursions and family outings. Laiya is not one barrio, but several, that  promise to develop into a full fledged tourism complex. Investors have been coming in, attracted by a new road that leads out of the town hall through villages, rice fields and coconut plantations, and a host of economic development projects recently launched by the national government. 

Its biggest school, Batangas Eastern Academy, which everybody affectionately calls BEA, was founded by the late

And unbeknownst to many are the splendid old mansions of San Juan. I don't know if these are as numerous as those in Taal or Vigan, or as old, but they are to be seen, and reflected on. They are stately and beautiful, and locked up. They are not tourist attractions open to the public. A friend was so kind to accompany us on a visit to one of them, and it was true to its promise: old law books, for the owner was a distinguished lawyer, antique furniture, old jars,  and wide, hard-wood floors, wide windows and a great sala which hosted grand parties in the old glorious times.

At the outskirts of town is a place where they sell earthen pots (palayok),  vases, and jars, which families around have been making for generations. And they still make lambanog (fermented coconut juice).  All around are farms and orchards. The big families that made the town still have property in San Juan, but no longer live there. An institution that has stayed and grown is the 70-year old Batangas Eastern Academy, founded by the late Mercedes S. de Villa.

San Juan used to be part of what used to be the bigger town  of Rosario. Now San Juan is the second largest town of Batangas, a first-class municipality that hopes to be a city some day. It has some way to go (it has one Mercury Drug Store, but no McDonalds nor Jollibee), but it will get there.

(Photo above of San Juan de Nepomuceno Church is from Recoletos Communications, Inc.)

Pacquiao Packs It In: PR for His Country

Manny Pacquiao, the world's best boxer today, this morning sent Ricky  Hatton ridiculously flat on his back, in the second round of their bout in Las Vegas, after their flooring him  twice right in the first round.  

He has done for the Philippines something no one else is doing: making his people, all of them who have seen or watched or read of him, extremely proud of being Filipinos. 

Manny makes  people stir up, shout, jump and declare to the rest of the world: hey, we Filipinos are good, we are here, and we have what  it takes. In this hall where my son and I watched the live broadcast of  the fight this morning,  hundreds cheered up and hooted and screamed and congratulated each other:  this was a victory of our people and our country. People said to each other: "panalo tayo!, our country has won!"

We will remember for a long time that final lethal left hook that caught Hatton on the jaw: clean, clear, and utterly convincing. And when the referee ruled the fight over, for Hatton was entirely, piteously motionless for a few minutes, Pacquiao rushes to a corner, falls on his knees and says his prayer of thanks. The same thing that he does each time he fights--pray.

Another thing Manny  always does is say that he fights for the honor of his country, and dedicate his victories to his people. In all his fights, he thrills his people with his speed, power, poise, and laser- like focus. He prepares for his fights with months of concentrated and disciplined training, and with the best in his business.  He is a consummate professional.

Manny speaks English now. And he does so with complete refreshing confidence, never hesitates  responding to queries from the world's press, never mind the mishaps that await those who are not to the language born. 

He wins for his country mileage and I hope respectful notice from the rest of the world. A country that produces a champion like Manny Pacquiao cannot be  that much of a loser.  Maybe foreigners will look at our country more closely,  and  regard our people with greater understanding.

Maybe more of them will come to visit or try out investment opportunities?

Manny Pacquiao is the Philippines' best PR agency these days. 

PR Agencies Seem Unperturbed

Many of us in the PR Agency business were in tenterhooks at the beginning of this year. Would the recession in the U.S., whose impact was going to be felt in the Philippines,  send Clients bidding goodbye, especially when many of them had announced they were letting people go and expected  lower sales and revenues.

Well, it may still be early days, and dire events can still happen. But the fact that they have not reminds us that things often do not turn out to be as bad as they are foretold. 

Clients press on with their projects, and we continue to receive expressions of interest, some from other countries. Other PR agencies seem unperturbed as well, busy as they are: we see them quite often in bids for new accounts.

The PR Agency business is one particularly gifted to ride out rough patches. We have a large array of services that do not require large media buys. Our budgets are closely monitored by Clients and are, therefore,  more easily aligned to their needs and resources. The outcomes of our campaigns are accounted for,  and measured against budgets.

The way to deal with a troubled economy is  not to be deterred by it. During these times, we try to update our organization's skills and create more cohesive and hard-hitting profit centers. We rationalize our costs and create efficiencies and, always, improve Oh, let us make ourselves more widely known,  market ourselves a bit. Make prospects appreciate the fact that PR provides immediate service but also long-term value.

A crisis is not a time to wail and gnash teeth. It is when we get ourselves readier and tougher for the long hard race.

Blooming Bukidnon

I am one of those funny benighted guys, who early on chose to see more of the outside world than my own. For this,  I have been trying to make up. Over the past Holy Week, we saw a bit of the lovely province of Bukidnon, specifically, of its capital city, Malaybalay. I had suggested Bukidnon, because when I was in grade school, we would sing a song that had in it a line about the beautiful mountains of Bukidnon.

Bukidnon is deep in fecund  Northern Mindanao. From  the airport in Cagayan de Oro,   a car drove us up to the Benedictine Monastery of the Transfiguration, in  Barangay San Juan Jose, Malaybalay. We joined a spiritual retreat up to Easter Sunday. The Monastery, cradled in a crib of green beautiful mountains and  undulating hills,  is bewitching: quiet, gorgeous and uplifting. I came for the mountains as well, and I had them and listened to them.

Bukidnon is one Mindanao's most lushly endowed provinces, in mineral  resources,  and fertile soil that yields pineapples, rice, corn,  bananas, vegetables, coffee and many other bountiful crops. The Benedictine monks plant rice and corn and coffee, which help support their mission and their good works. Bukidnon is one of the greenest places I have ever been to. 

A pity that Bukidnon is a largely unknown place,  even amongst us Filipinos. It does not even have a significant  airport of its own. Being more widely known should put it on the radar screens of potential domestic and potential investors, say, in hotels or bed-and-breakfasts and tourist facilities.

The monks spoke to us of little Easters in our lives, how and why we must find and keep them. 

My family and I got  quite a few of them, up in the glorious mountains of Bukidnon.

 

Thinking Holy Week

I have never read it, but all this past half century, since a professor of mine, who had completed a short course at Oxford and became, and still is, a Carmelite nun, mentioned  the Gerald Vann lecture on The Two Trees, I have been captivated by the image. Gerald Vann,  a Benedictine priest, was a celebrated British  theologian. 

In 1948, he delivered a series of  broadcast lectures entitled The Two Trees. There are two trees in our lives: the first  in the Garden of Eden,  from which we fell from grace, and the other, the tree on Calvary, where Christ met his martyrdom.  

We struggle through life, with our imperfections and sins, allured by the glow of the first tree.  Its green boughs and refreshing shade entice us and we reap unearned riches, lose our honor us human beings, and "die in a ditch like a dog" (Pasternak). 

Or, with faith and grace, we win the salvation of the second tree. We suffer for our sins, but we are given the means  and the power to renew ourselves. 

The beautiful thing about the Passion of Christ and the joy of  Easter is that they are ours to garner and be enriched with. 

We do not have to  be saints or heroes; we just have to be our humble, believing and paying-our-dues selves. We have to be giving and forgiving folks, generous with our belief in the goodness of others and contrite when we make fools of ourselves, which is most of the time.

I was a boy when I first  heard of the Two Trees. The two trees stand tall, each with its promise, and a beautiful picture of the sadness, and also, and finally, the glory of the life and passion of Christ. Happy Easter!