MANILA, PHILIPPINES – In the Philippines, sometimes a campaign goes so viral that it makes netizens ask in amusement or shock, “Who thought of this?!” And the answer is often GIGIL. But in the thirteenth episode of adoboTalks podcast | the business of creativity, Badong Abesamis, one of the independent agency’s founding partners, reminds us that they’re more than just weird. And we can definitely take his word for it.
His decades in the Filipino ad world have earned him a spot among the industry greats. In 2021, Campaign Brief Asia named him as one of the “Top 10 Most Awarded Creative Leaders in Asia,” followed by the “Philippines’ Most Awarded Creative Director” title in 2023 and 2024. Adweek even included him, along with fellow GIGIL Founding Partner Herbert Hernandez, in their “Creative 100” list.
For his podcast episode, GIGIL Gets Real, Badong sat down with us to retrace his unlikely trajectory from classroom teacher to being at the helm of Asia-Pacific’s most talked-about independent agencies, unpack the campaigns that continue to define the GIGIL spirit, and discuss what exactly the secret ingredient to creative effectiveness is.
A far journey from the classroom
You’d think a trailblazing ad man like Badong would have always known he was going into the industry, but that wasn’t the case. His first job when he joined the workforce wasn’t a gig at an agency; it was a position at his alma mater, Xavier School in Metro Manila, where he taught Religion and Filipino.
When he realized it wasn’t for him, he set his sights on advertising.
“I was always the go-to guy in my younger years for creative stuff,” he told us. “So, I said, why not give it a shot?”
Taking that shot meant starting at local shop Avellana & Associates, where even as a junior copywriter on his first advertising role, he was entrusted with a heavyweight account: PLDT. “I was fortunate to have been given a big brand to handle …. [It was] enough for me to be able to put together a good book,” he said.
“I did a couple of good pieces, good films, enough for me to be noticed,” he added. “So, I thought that was a sign that possibly there is something in this for me — enough for me to pursue it and try to learn some more.”
And learn he did. From Avellana, he went to various agencies, such as McCann Erickson, Saatchi & Saatchi, and TBWA\Santiago Mangada Puno. He’s also had stints at Leo Burnett, first as a Group Head and later as a Creative Director. Then, he eventually he eventually became Y&R Philippines’ Executive Creative Director in 2009, where he was promoted to Chief Creative Officer less than four years later.
Under his guidance, Y&R Philippines thrived. They broke into the country’s top five creative agencies, won their first Agency of the Year plate, and bagged the Philippines’ first APAC Effies metal for the network. Which raises the question: Why walk away from all that?
Setting up shop at GIGIL
By 2017, Badong had spent more than seven years at Y&R, ending as Chief Creative Officer. That year, he was invited to head yet another multinational agency’s creative department. An exciting offer, for sure, but he admitted that it also left him thinking: “It’s going to be the same gig.”
“So, I talked to Herbert Hernandez, and we decided to set up our own shop,” he said. “Of course, the possibility of failure is always there. That was very real to us …. [But] there have been [successful independent agencies] — enough for us to feel that it can be done.”
But before the awards came the work, and few campaigns have reaffirmed GIGIL’s place in the ad industry as loudly as their bizarre and viral Family film for RC Cola. As Badong put it, this campaign was “a watershed in our life as an agency that luckily worked.”
For years, RC Cola in the Philippines was the affordable cola alternative to Coke and Pepsi. Then, the government’s sugar tax hit. And without that price edge, they couldn’t compete with the soft drink giants.
“At that time, they approached us and asked us to try to help them figure things out. And we were thinking, maybe there’s merit in looking into Gen Z as a market, because we all know that Gen X and Gen Y are captured by Coca-Cola already,” he recalled.
The team dove into Gen Z behavior and came away with one word: basta.
“[Gen Z] is very random, very uncurated, very spontaneous,” he explained. “Ask them about certain things, and [they’ll] actually tell you, ‘Basta.’”
“We thought maybe there’s something there in terms of a campaign – linking basta as a zeitgeist, as a way of thinking, as a mentality, to RC Cola, so much so that Gen Z can see themselves in the brand and say, ‘This is for me.’”
The ad went viral globally, garnering a whopping 20,869% rise in social conversions versus the year before and boosting RC Cola’s sales by 67%.
Wild, wacky, but way more than weird
Badong is the first to admit that the “weird for the sake of it” approach is a trap. “An easy one to fall into, if we haven’t already,” he joked.
But he clarified that GIGIL really isn’t in the business of being weird for weird’s sake. “Everything [we do] is based on either a human insight or a product truth.”
Besides, for all of the surrealism the agency is often associated with, Badong also pointed out that their portfolio isn’t one-note at all.
“The agency is not just all about weird,” he added. “We’ve done a lot of [other] things.”
One of the clearest examples is the Studs film for Levi’s Philippines’ The Tailor Shop, where any in-store denim could be customized. The campaign tackled the brand’s challenge at the time: many Filipinos saw Levi’s as old, traditional, and “too Western.”
That made the team lean into something deeply Filipino: family.
In the film, a father walks into a Tailor Shop and meticulously instructs the staff on where each stud should go on a denim jacket. Only at the end do we realize why.
The studs actually spell out a message in braille for his blind son: “Anywhere you go, andyan lagi si Papa.”
The work didn’t just tug heartstrings. It clocked 31.9 million views and 790k shares, delivered a 72% rise in revenue, and lifted overall holiday sales by 16%.
Then there was their stunt for Netflix’s Red Notice, where the iconic SM Mall of Asia globe seemingly vanished. The activation helped push the film to the #1 spot on Netflix Philippines for 12 straight days, with the title staying in the country’s Top 10 for weeks after.
“All of those pieces were of different genres, not just weird. [And] all of those also built the business.”
Hard work first, metals second
Family for RC Cola brought home the independent agency’s first Cannes Festival win, bagging a Bronze Film Lion in 2021. But that was only the start of their international acclaim.
In 2025 alone, they snatched two more Bronze Film Lions; this time for Miracle (RC Cola) and Steal (Mandaue Foam). The same campaigns scored big with three pencils at the D&AD Awards. Add to that their groundbreaking haul of 13 metals at MAD STARS 2025 in Busan, South Korea. And even with that groundbreaking haul, that’s just to name a few.
Campaign Brief The Work 2025 even declared GIGIL as the #1 agency in Asia-Pacific — the first time a Filipino agency has topped the region in the show’s history.
And Badong isn’t pretending that he couldn’t care less about these awards. He admitted that winning them is still important.
Why?
“Because we’re creative preachers,” he answered, laughing. “And validation is very important …. It’s important to win, because it’s an indication that the idea was good. And we have to come up with good ideas, because only good ideas deliver business results.”
But he’s also crystal clear that, as creatives, the finish line you envision shouldn’t be clouded by what awards you want to win. The work always comes first.
“That’s the thing that has worked for us,” he said. “The North Star is really [the] client’s business. Take care of clients’ business.”
This is the core of his creative ethos: the perseverance to find an idea that works, and make it the best it can be. And it’s at the heart of what he would tell young creatives who are still struggling to strike gold in their advertising careers.
“Don’t stop,” he advised. “Just keep at it. Expose yourself to the best of the world. Find some mentors. Go in a space in which your ‘hypercreativity’ is developed.”
Likewise, in GIGIL, he insisted, there’s no mystical secret sauce or one-of-a-kind kooky ritual behind the out-of-the-box ideas. “It really is [just about] not being afraid to do hard work,” he emphasized.
“Until you come up with an idea that you’re confident enough that you yourself would share — or [even] your enemy will share because it’s so interesting — then don’t stop.”
“[Clients] don’t come to us because we win awards in Cannes,” he continued. “They come to us because they want us to build their brands and because they want us to sell their products. And we take that seriously.”
Catch the insightful conversation with Badong Abesamis on Episode 13 of the adoboTalk Podcast on Spotify, YouTube, and Soundcloud. The adoboTalks Podcast | the business of creativity, is presented by adobo Magazine, the word on creativity and produced in partnership with The Pod Network and Hit Productions.
