The Ascendants
PHILSTAR MEDIA GROUP RISES HIGH AT THE 2017 MSAP MEDIA CONGRESS
PHILSTAR Media Group, the country’s largest and most-successful printbased multimedia company, climbed greater heights anew at the recently concluded Ascendant: Media Specialists Association of the Philippines (MSAP) Media Congress 2017 held at Camp John Hay, Baguio City.
The four-day media congress featured several renowned media industry professionals who talked about current trends and paradigm shifts rocking the industry in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world. Among the key speakers are Turner AsiaPacific senior director for data and insights David Webb, ABS-CBN president and CEO Carlo Katigbak, Dentsu X Asia-Pacific managing director James Hawkins, Nielsen SEA Emerging Markets managing director Stuart Jamieson, Havas Group SEA chief creative officer Valerie Madon, Facebook head of agency for Asia-Pacific Neil Stewart, and Google Philippines country manager Kenneth Lingan.
Philstar Media Group’s different brands, The Philippine STAR, BusinessWorld and Pilipino STAR Ngayon, led by its president and CEO Miguel G. Belmonte, were in the City of Pines as one of the main sponsors for the third staging of the country’s largest convocation of media experts and practitioners.
The company hosted a special welcome dinner on Day One of the four-day gathering, entitled Philstar Live Sessions. No less than Mr. Belmonte welcomed the more than 2,000 congress delegates gathered at the CAP-John Hay Conference Center.
“We are happy to support and be part of the MSAP Media Congress for the third time. We wish the organizers a successful event. From the look of this evening’s party, we’re off to a very good start,” Belmonte said.
He also remarked about the company’s remarkable evolution in recent years in response to the massive paradigm shifts in the media industry that made it the country’s most-successful media enterprise.
“As we all know, the media landscape has changed dramatically through the years and we’d like to believe that
The Philippine STAR, having adapted to the new media dynamic, is the ascendant. While we continue to dominate print, our forays to digital, TV as well as outdoor have enabled us to reach a wider audience than ever before,” Belmonte stated.
An audio-visual presentation during the Philstar Live Sessions also highlighted the company’s newest media endeavors. It recently signed a partnership with TouchPay to offer news and advertisements in its more than 800 electronic payment kiosks. In October, the company will launch, together with Future Proof, the first-ever free Virtual Leadership Summit. These new innovations were showcased in the Philstar Media Group booth located at the MSAP Media Congress Marketplace located in the CAP-John Hay Conference Hall grounds.
Philstar Media Group also raffled off several special prizes to selected Philstar Live Sessions participants and capped the night off with an open mic session, where congress delegates and members of Philstar Media Group sang the night away.
Culminating the fourday media congress is the second MSAP ICE Awards, which recognizes some of the industry’s best media campaigns and advertisements released in the past 12 months.
Philstar Media Group was the most-awarded print-based media company in the awards night, garnering four bronze for the media campaigns Cardboard
Balita and #PilasPinas (Not-forprofit category) and the TV series Single/Single 2 (Branded Content and Activation category), as well as two silver medals for Single/Single 2 (Multimedia category) and the business event BusinessWorld Economic Forum (Activation category).
Philstar Media Group EVP Lucien Dy Tioco, BusinessWorld sales and marketing head Jay Sarmiento and The STAR’s sales and marketing director Mick Atienza led the company in receiving the awards.