Gino Evaristo
Senior Brand Manager
ABS-CBN Publishing Inc.

Education:
BS Manufacture Engineering and Management
De La Salle University, 1993

What is your primary function as Senior Brand Manager?

As the Senior Brand Manager, I take care of all aspects of the business operations. Any publishing business has the ad sales aspect, the revenue aspect, the production cost aspect, and the operational aspect.  

All of these have to be controlled by some sort of a mini-General Manager (GM). With respect to the titles I’m assigned to, I’m like the mini-GM who sustains and develops the business and makes sure that the revenues are coming according to what has been projected or targeted; I also control the production costs to a level wherein productivity is not sacrificed and yet the savings are still there.

How many magazine titles do you handle?

I have six regular titles. Star Studio and The Buzz are the entertainment titles. The two youth titles are Chalk and Pink, I also handle Food Magazine and Working Mom. Now, we spin off a lot of other special projects like the Kris Aquino magazine, the Sharon Cuneta magazine, the MYX magazine, and the Kusinera magazine.  And a lot of other special projects also spin off from regular titles.

What are the challenges facing your industry now?

The main challenge now is coming out with a profitable magazine venture.  You have to consider that the current total size of the Philippine market for glossy magazines is not that big, because Filipinos started appreciating glossy magazines the past ten years. The market size we’re looking at is just about two to three million readers in the entire Philippines. When you come out with magazines in general, it’s identifying a particular interest of one potential reader and focusing the content into serving that interest or need of that particular individual. The more focused you are and the better you identify what need has to be served, the greater the chances that the magazine will be successful.

The challenge now is this: with a small market size, how can you identify a particular need to serve which  would be profitable to the publisher as well.

How do you respond to the challenge?

It’s easier to identify the niches now. You either deal with fashion, beauty or showbiz - these are the contents that majority of Filipinos appreciate immediately. Now the challenge lies three to five years from now, when competitions start identifying more products and more interests.

One example is the Metro Magazine, which started from serving a wide array of interests – from people to fashion, to beauty, to dining. All of these are covered by Metro but after a while readers started becoming very choosy with regards to the content. An example is Metro Homes. Metro used to have a Home section but since more and more readers wanted to just read about homes, Metro had to spin off its Home section into its own Metro Home magazine.

In Star Studio, we started out with showbiz celebrity lifestyle, but now we’re featuring a particular artist in a biography like one special magazine on Jericho Rosales alone.

How would you know if the magazine is successful?

Circulation can be a gauge although it is not the only one. In any magazine business now in the Philippines, there has to be an advertising controller. That’s the ultimate thrust of any magazine: it’s a matter of circulating as much as you can and selling that circulation to an advertiser who wants to ride on with your circulation.

Tell us about your career path.

Although I’m an engineer, when I was still in school, all my extra-curricular activities were more focused on doing activities for a business organization.

I was able to develop my marketing skills; this sets me apart from the rest because I am more knowledgeable in terms of numbers. Because I’m an engineer, I treat everything as science - even content generation for me is a science.

After school, I joined a consultancy company for three months which  gave me some training in business consultancy.

Then I got a good job offer in Petron Sales. I was there for eight months. After that, I joined my family in our marketing business. We were able to acquire at that time the rights to the Philippine Marketing Office of Hersheys Chocolate. During that time, Hersheys didn’t have a Philippine office, and they were working with the marketing agencies.  We got a four-year contract as the marketing campaign office for Hershey. That gave me a lot of exposures in marketing, merchandising, media and running promotions.

In the course of that four-year contract, I was able to develop my business development aspect because we were starting up different types of businesses focused on distribution and retailing.

After that, I joined ABS-CBN in 1999 as Business Development Manager. My task was to explore more projects and come up with more magazines for the company in response to the competition set by other publishing companies. In 2000, we came out with two more titles: The Star Studio Magazine which hit the showbiz interest market and Chalk which focuses on the different campuses. In 2000, I was moved from Business Development to handle the Circulation Department.

In Circulation, which I handled for three years, my main accomplishment is that I was able to set-up our own distribution system.

How do you remain competitive as a leader in the industry?

One, you have to know your market. The more you know your market, the easier it is to deal with them. The more knowledgeable you are about your target, the better grasp you have – you already know their habits, you know when they will buy a magazine, you know how much they can spend for magazines or any products.

If you know your market, it will be easier for you to manage your expenses as well.

Secondly, you have to know the other players in your industry. There are a lot of things you can learn from competition. Once in a while they will come out with a campaign and you can lose. But I treat weaknesses or losses as a strength because it’s an opportunity for you to learn what to do and what not to do because you have learned already from the past experience lalo na when you lose. Mas maganda pag naranasan mong matalo at least natuto ka and ayaw mo na mangyari ulit yun, you’ll make sure that next time you will not lose again.

Where do you go from here?

I’d like to keep on developing businesses not only for myself but also see and help other people make their own successes out of the businesses that they started. It gives me great satisfaction, achievement and fulfillment to see other people become successful.

What advice can you give to those who want to be like you?

If you’re in the corporate environment as an employee, work as if you own the company. Because if you confine yourself to your basic functions, nothing’s going to happen. Just work as if you own the company and things will look a lot better.