Merlee Jayme on Filipinos’ unpretentious creativity

“Given our skills and talent, our biggest challenge in the Philippines is really our budget. But in the past, we know that it never stifled creativity. Instead, it has pushed us to show relevance in our work,” Jayme said.

 

Jayme picks Coca-Cola (McCann Worldgroup Philippines) and Pepsi (BBDO Guerrero) campaigns as perfect examples of her claim. The Coca-Cola campaign addressed the reality of overseas Filipino workers spending many Christmases away from their families due to lack of money. Coca-Cola’s ‘The OFW Project’ addressed this need by bringing home three OFWs so they could spend Christmas with loved ones in the Philippines while creating a moving, Platinum award-winning campaign. 

 

Meanwhile, Pepsi’s ‘Bottle Light’ campaign addressed the issue of lack light in most houses in barrios due to the high cost of electricity. Who knew that something as simple as an empty Pepsi bottle, water and some chlorine can solve this problem while producing yet another multi award-winning campaign.

 

DM9 JaymeSyfu’s own project for women’s rights group Gabriela helped solve the growing number of sex scandal videos in the country by ingeniously changing Facebook names, pushing scandal search results down to 30 pages. 

 

These campaigns, and more, are just some of the examples on how creative and resourceful Filipinos can be, said Jayme. 

 

“Filipinos are not a pretentious people; we are true to our craft, to the way we think and to the way we solve [national] problems. [The result] is that we exhibit our creativity and win awards for our country.”

 

And because of the Filipinos’ innate desire to help solve the problems that plague the country, “we unconsciously display our creativity,” Jayme added.