Changes in the world

Thursday, Dec. 8, my grandmother’s feast day. Her name was Concepcion Barbara. I was named after her. It changed to Barbara when I studied abroad. We were warned: Concepcion is a Catholic name and Switzerland is not a Catholic country. My passport then was issued to “C. Barbara Gonzalez.”

What is the relevance of such trivia today? I toddled off to the bank in my building to deposit a check and suddenly found that all the three banks were closed. From the day I was born I remembered Dec. 8, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, as a Catholic holiday. Since there was a separation of Church and State, I knew that Catholic schools had no class, but government and private institutions, like banks and department stores (or later shopping malls), were open.

“Why are the banks closed?” I asked the security guard.

“Because it’s the feast of the Immaculate Conception,” he said.

“But that’s a Catholic feast. It means no school. It doesn’t mean no banks,” I uselessly protested.

“I think it’s a new declaration,” he said.

A lady I knew got into the elevator with me. I asked her, “Did you know that banks are closed because it’s the feast of the Immaculate Conception?”

“Yes,” she said. “It’s the first time that offices are closed for a Catholic feast day,” she observed. “I think it’s a declaration of the new government.”

Well, of course, I thought to myself. Who else has the authority to declare a holiday? Maybe they will say that since they started to observe the Muslim holidays it was time to also observe the Catholic holidays. That’s a great answer, I thought.

By the time I got back home I thought: That is good PR (public relations). The government is probably looking for a strong albeit quiet way to win the Catholic Church over to its side.

This reminded me that I had worked in advertising for more than 30 years. I realized that very few people out there really understood what advertising was and blamed it for everything evil that happened in the world. Those of us who worked in it were too busy to explain because it was a profession that reeked of urgent deadlines and working late. If you want to understand advertising you should read the book Advertising: An Uneasy Profession written by an American whose name I can’t remember, who tagged along and realized that our work was generally misunderstood. I had that book but I donated it somewhere so it’s gone.

Anyway, over the last years that I worked there was a phrase that gained popularity during presentations. It was “Below-the-Line.” You first drew a horizontal line. Then above it you wrote “Print, Radio, TV, Cinema,” all collectively called “Media.”  Below it you wrote “PR” and “Events.” You then generally allocated more money to “Above-the-Line” items because Media was expensive and less money than “Below-the-Line,” since PR and Events (like Sampling) were cheaper then.  But you could tell how many people you reached through Events while you couldn’t quantify the numbers you reached by Media, no matter what formula or black box you used.

That was over 20 years ago and much has changed since. From being traditional or analog, slowly digital was being invented, moving in and now almost completely taking over. One of the differences between analog (the old-fashioned way) and digital is that digital tells you exactly how many people have viewed your advertising, meaning you can figure out your costs better. That certainly makes advertising on computers and cell phones worthwhile.

That is a major change. I remember one evening over drinks discussing this with Raul Locsin, then publisher of Business World, and Jose “Totoy” Avellana, chairman and president of Avellana & Associates, an advertising agency where I once worked, and me, then president of J. Romero & Associates, another ad agency. Raul wondered if we understood how the new developments worked. We weren’t even familiar with the term “digital.”  I, being the youngest among them and the most computer-literate, said, “Frankly, I don’t understand.”

Now both Raul and Totoy are in heaven. Look where we are. I watch YouTube and tune out the ads. I lose sleep watching Asian series on Netflix. I commiserate with the traditional ad agencies because I know now it’s more worthwhile to do PR and Events, much better now, than media advertising. I wonder how the agencies adjusted. They must have changed their hiring policies to keep in quick step with the digital world.

Once we believed in the separation of Church and State. Look where we are now. Once you hated advertising? It’s in your cell phone now and you can’t erase it. But you can quickly return to the game you were playing and virtually — a digital word — ignore the advertising. So much has changed and will not stop changing.

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