WPP Media Philippines gathered leaders from the media, marketing and content industries for the second edition of “WPP Media Now & Next,” highlighting how rapidly changing consumer behavior is reshaping the way brands connect with audiences.
This year’s event, themed “Connecting Context, Content, and Commerce Systems,” focused on the increasingly blurred lines between consuming content, engaging with communities, and making purchasing decisions.
Josh Gallagher, Chief Strategy Officer of WPP Media APMEA, said understanding both current consumer behavior and where it is headed has become increasingly important amid economic pressures and a rapidly evolving media landscape.
“As marketers, we want to decode consumers, understand how they behave, and how we can influence them,” Gallagher said.
He noted that consumers are no longer influenced primarily by traditional advertising and brands, with creators, online communities, friends and family playing a bigger role in shaping their decisions.
“They’ve always been influenced by their family and friends, but now that’s in the thousands of creators that they scroll through on their screen every day,” he said.
Gallagher also emphasized the importance of looking beyond major urban centers such as Metro Manila to identify new opportunities for growth.
WPP Media is launching a rural study aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of individual communities across the Philippines, including how their behaviors and needs may differ from those in major cities.
“We want to grow business, right? And sometimes that’s not in Metro Manila. Sometimes that’s out in different parts of the Philippines where we talk about source of growth,” Gallagher said.
Crisela Cervantes, Chief Executive Officer of WPP Media Philippines, said Now & Next was created as an opportunity for marketers, publishers, clients and agencies to exchange insights on changes in consumers’ lives.
“The biggest advantage that any brand or marketer can have is how fast you’re able to learn and how fast you’re able to adapt,” Cervantes said.
According to Cervantes, the relationship between advertising and purchasing has dramatically shortened because of digital platforms.
In the past, consumers might see an advertisement on television and make a purchasing decision days later. Today, an advertisement, product discovery and transaction can all happen within the same digital experience.
“The connection that happens between the consumer, the context they’re in, and the actual purchase that they make can happen in one moment. It’s not separate moments now,” she explained.
Cervantes described the modern screen as a “storefront,” where consumers can move almost instantly from entertainment to shopping.
She also stressed the growing importance of communities, saying brands need to understand what brings people together beyond the products they are trying to sell.
The event also explored how media companies are adapting traditional storytelling to changing viewing habits.
Jolly Estaris, Head of iWant at ABS-CBN Corporation, discussed the platform’s journey into microdramas and the challenge of translating ABS-CBN’s history of long-form storytelling into episodes that can run for only a few minutes.
Estaris said the company initially worked with an experienced microdrama partner to understand what kinds of stories, premises and talent resonated with viewers before eventually developing its own productions.
One of the biggest adjustments involved completely rethinking script structure.
Instead of approaching a microdrama like a traditional hour-long television program, writers had to build stories around individual short episodes, with cliffhangers strategically placed to keep viewers watching.
“You have to have a cliffhanger every two minutes,” Estaris said.
Audience data also became part of the storytelling process, helping the team identify where viewers were dropping off and where stronger hooks were needed.
Estaris said the first five episodes of their microdramas are offered for free before the paywall begins on episode six, making the fifth episode particularly important in encouraging audiences to continue watching.
The strategy has shown promising results, with Estaris saying the first three microdramas created by the team collectively generated around 77 million views across iWant and social platforms.
Veteran broadcast journalist Karen Davila, meanwhile, shared lessons from her decades-long career and her expansion into digital content creation on YouTube.
Davila said one of the most important skills she has developed is knowing how to make interview subjects comfortable while remaining a journalist capable of asking difficult questions.
“You need to have good bedside manners,” she said, explaining that journalists need to build relationships without compromising their responsibility to ask tough questions.
Davila also reflected on how her interviewing style has evolved over the years, including learning to interrupt guests less and becoming more conscious of approaching stories without immediately judging the people involved.
She said maturity taught her to look beyond simply presenting opposing sides and instead understand the nuances within a story.
Davila also spoke about authenticity as an important part of building an audience, particularly as journalists and traditional media personalities move into digital platforms.
Looking back on the beginning of her career, she recalled advice from her father that continues to guide her.
“Don’t look for the money. Find something you love to do, something you love to do, and the money will come,” Davila recalled.
She said she deliberately chose opportunities that would help her build credibility and made it a point early in her career to be “the hardest working woman in the room.”
“I knew when I was young, I wanted to be taken seriously. I’m going to work hard to be trusted,” she said.
Davila also discussed working with brands on her YouTube content, stressing that partnerships require careful planning to maintain the integrity of the storytelling.
Unlike conventional 15- or 30-second advertisements, her YouTube episodes can run for 35 to 45 minutes, requiring brands to be integrated naturally into a longer narrative.
“The storytelling and the idea of a collaboration was always important before producing a YouTube episode,” Davila said.
For WPP Media, the discussions underscored a common challenge facing brands, agencies and media organizations: audiences are moving faster, consuming content differently and increasingly making decisions within interconnected digital ecosystems.