manny villar’s “magtatapos ng kahirapan” tv ad – a bold shift in advertising strategy, 5 stars!

we think manny villar’s latest tv ad represents a bold shift in advertising strategy for the villar campaign. the villar campaign now claims “si manny villar ang magtatapos ng ating kahirapan” (manny villar will end our poverty) at the end of the tv ad.

this is the first time the villar campaign  has positioned the candidate on a anti-poverty platform. more importantly, this is the first time that villar ads are making such a very direct and brave claim as eradicating poverty.

villar’s previous ads were not directly on poverty. he was on the ofw campaign when he started airing ads. the ofw positioning only indirectly touches on poverty and in these ads, the positioning was on his generosity at helping ofws. it was really more on establishing the character of being helpful and generous and much less on solving anything.

from the ofw campaign, it shifted to introducing the villar persona and his personal history. these were the ads where he told viewers his roots in tondo, that he himself was poor before. the idea is to paint a personality profile of villar to the voters, sort of like distributing his resume to the voters. in advertising terms, this was to establish villar’s brand image in more concrete terms.

during this time he also ran ads that talked to the youth.  while the target in those ads clearly shifted to young voters, it continued to be on the idea of building the villar brand image. in these ads he was saying that villar is someone different from what people may have originally thought of him. he was a down to earth man to whom people, specially young voters can relate to.

we are guessing that they ran these ads as they may have seen that there was a gap in villar’s political base – young voters. young voters account for a big share of the total number of voters.

this current ad is notable not just because of the direct anti-poverty positioning but also uses a clever device of children in the ads. this is not a continuation from the previ0us teens ad, but the reason why they featured children in these ads is to indirectly state that villar is a presidentiable who will work for the future generations of filipinos. it is an indirect and we think a very clever way to connect with the adult voters whose primary concern is the future of their children. in advertising, the usual tact is that you get the talents to appear in the ads who are in the same age bracket as the target market. in the villar ad, they had children as talents who are not obviously voters but are targeting adults who are the voters. this ad is unique in that sense.

the anti-poverty positioning to us was surprising. they have turned the villar campaign to be be one of solving problems of the country versus the previous campaigns that focus on establishing the persona or brand image of villar. it is a shift from the persona ads to a solve the problems ad campaign.

this ad promises everything  – free education, jobs and homes for the country’s future generations and at the end, the gang bang promise of removing poverty in the country. these are of course popular issued with most  pinoy voters as they are in truth the biggest problems in the country.

while the ad made these bold promises, it did not say exactly how villar will fulfill those promises except that he was once poor and by implication says he knows how to lift the country’s poor to being wealthy.

on the whole, we think it is a great tv ad with a strong mass appeal from both the positioning standpoint but also and equally important the use of the jingle and kids to deliver its messages. the jingle in particular is very good – easy to remember and to sing and an attractive melody. we won’t be surprised if many kids are now singing this jingle.

villar’s message in this – this is one for the parents. who think mostly of their children’s future, that villar can give their children what they all want for them – education, jobs and homes.

excellent work from the villar campaign.

also read this: the presidentiables campaign themes: poverty, corruption and ego trip. what works and what fails.