Ripple8 names new managing partner

MANILA, Philippines — Integrated PR solutions agency Ripple8 recently announced the promotion of Michelle Ople to managing partner.

Joining Ripple8 nearly four years ago as media relations and activations director and concurrently serving as such, Ople is a familiar name in TV, radio, print and online media.

Her many years as a journalist proved instrumental in continuing to build relationships with Ripple8’s media partners and clients at a time of shelved campaigns and curtailed budgets since the pandemic started in 2020.

Ople also plays an important role in Ripple8’s crisis management team where she helps assess and manage issues with immediate, data-based recommendations and media intelligence.

More recently, Ople helped expand Ripple8’s media coverage to the international community for the Department of Tourism (DOT), helping build strategies to keep the country’s tourism sector relevant to targeted emerging markets. This, despite the current lull in leisure travel, is made possible through strategic relationship-building initiatives, and innovative visits using virtual technology and other efforts.

“Mich has been an integral part of Ripple8’s strategic growth and continued success by fortifying our relationships with media to the extent that what we have with them are no longer transactional, but rather personal – almost familial – relations. And this benefits not just us, but our clients,” said Ripple8 head and managing director Bobby Vito. “This promotion is merely a formality. In the years that I’ve worked with her, she has acted like a partner long before she received the title.”

The public relations arm of DDB Group Philippines, Ripple8 is one of the most sought-after PR firms in the country, with a clientele that includes energy and water utilities, telecom, QSRs, consumer staples, beverages, mass transportation, airlines, healthcare, banking and finance, resorts and hotels, government agencies, and even the globally famed Miss Universe Organization.

Because of the caliber of its people, Ripple8 is a perennial recipient of numerous industry awards, winning alongside DDB Group the Agency of the Year (AOY) title in the Philippine Quill Awards three times (2013, 2018, 2019) and runner-ups for AOY in the Anvil Awards – both are recognized as two of the most esteemed award-giving bodies in the field of marketing communications.

Ripple8 has also garnered other local and international awards, the most recent of which is the “PR Agency of the Year” Silver Award, a Southeast Asia regional honor from Campaign’s Agency of the Year 2020.