Brand & Business: PGAG’s Secret Behind Campaigning and Storytelling Told with Disruptive GOT-Themed Videos and Korean Drama-Inspired Advertisements

Advertising’s very essence revolves around the concept of capturing an audience and delivering a message effectively. How a brand chooses to get to point B is where the variation comes in. Add in celebrity endorsers, tear-jerking lines, and disruptive shenanigans, and you’ve got yourself a campaign. If you’re lucky, it may win you a couple of loyal fans and an army of micro advertisers who share your content to their communities for you.

However, with the rise of digital and the spike of disruptive content on digital, it’s a growing challenge for brands to constantly keep their audience interested and receptive of their messages, and at the same time, think of innovative ways to create content. With story-based advertisements proliferating the market, how else could a brand stand out?

On June 25, 2019, PGAG (the youngest sibling of massively successful social media platforms SGAG and MGAG) gathered some of the country’s biggest advertisers and agencies to talk about what they do best: entertain.

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In the “From Campaigning to Storytelling” luncheon at Fairmont Makati, the pair who started it all showcased the process behind the madness of their team’s social media content – with memes being in the center of it all.

In photo (L-R): Hepmil Media Group CCO Adrian Ang, Vice Chariman Jeffrey Seah, Group Advisor James Tan, and CEO Karl Mak, share their excitement as they bring the company’s brand of humor to the Philippines through PGAG

Welcoming the audience and opening the program was Hepmil Media Group Vice Chairman, Jeffrey Seah, who explained the importance of engaging storytelling when creating branded content, especially in the digital landscape today.

Hepmil Media Group Jeffrey Seah welcomes guest and explains the importance of engaging storytelling when creating branded content

Karl Mak and Adrian Ang, Founders of the Singapore-based gag page then shared the videos that started their pages’ spike in popularity. From romantic Korean-inspired dramas to ridiculous Game of Thrones-themed clips, the videos embodied the group’s unique way of successfully engaging millennials in social media through funny content. This reverts to Jeffrey Seah’s opening remark that states “engagement is when people react to you”, and with PGAG, that they do.

CCO Adrian Ang shows entertaining clips on how comedy can be used to sell through its platforms

Karl Mak wraps up the program by showing a study that humorous branded content in Hepmil’s platforms, such as PGAG, can drive positive perceptions and interest of purchase to a brand.

Mak ang Ang also presented a valuable insight on why PGAG works: “We go on social media to look at entertaining content, not branded content”. This is apparent on the branded content videos that they have published that seamlessly flow into the entertaining videos millennials typically consume, resulting to the positive attitudes audiences grow to have for these brands, albeit unconsciously.

PGAG Country Manager Chris Alarcon also discussed what makes Filipino humor special, and how the nation’s love for social media has grown the PGAG platform by the thousands organically.

From left to right: Jeffrey Seah, Karl Mak, PGAG Country Manager Chris Alarcon, and Adrian Ang discuss insights on how to engage with millennials in social media through funny content

The following that PGAG has achieved for itself is hugely founded on capturing their audience’s attention and strengthening it with meme-filled content that millennials feel that they can relate to and share to their own communities – a following that even the biggest brands have a difficulty creating.