Discipline, Citizens, and Tatak FPJ:

An Analysis of the Political Marketing Strategies of the 2013 & 2016 Campaigns of Grace Poe

By

Fil Garciano

BS Entrepreneurship

2nd Semester, AY 2015-2016

Introduction

Marketing creates value for a specific product or value, and the goal of the marketer is to

broadcast this value to a customer base where said customers will consume the product.

Marketing has a broad reach, and is used for various purposes. Marketing is able to generate

buzz for typical consumer products such as food, events, luxury items, clothing, and for other

types of products and services such as advocacies, schools, and even people themselves. The

latter example is extremely evident in the field of political marketing, the topic of this paper.

Karen de Asis, a strategic marketing expert who is also the Chief Brand Strategist of

MKS Marketing Consulting, as well as a veteran academic who has taught at the business

schools of the Ateneo de Manila University as well as at De La Salle University, differentiates

conventional marketing for businesses with political marketing in a simple statement: political

marketing seeks to create “preference for a person and not a product”, and generate “voting

intent rather than purchasing intent”.

This perfectly sums up the nature and goal of political marketing, that being packaging

and creating value for a specific person or political entity so that they may be given a position in

government. The only way to achieve this is to create buzz among customers, or in this case,

voters, and to transform this buzz into voting intent and thereafter actual votes. Here we see how

interconnected political marketing is with conventional marketing for business, making it

obvious that these two are no different in terms of goals, and therefore should not be different in

terms of strategy.

However, political marketing, especially political marketing here in the Philippines, lags

behind in terms of scientific strategies, maturity, and other advancements evident in the

corporate marketing culture of the private sector. De Asis herself, in her article entitled Political

Marketing that Sells and Sizzles, describes political marketing in the Philippines as governed by

“political folk wisdom”, and as “sorely lacking in marketing expertise”. The political marketing

strategies of many of the different politicos in the country are mostly centered around name

recall and memorability, with their television, print, and online ads, heavily emphasizing their

names and ballot numbers, incorporating them into catchy jingles and memorable catchphrases.

Though recall can be helpful, as what political marketing guru Greg Garcia mentions in many of

his articles, it is not enough to hold a successful campaign. Being too recall-centric in terms of

our political ads also leads to the stagnation of the field, which already sorely lacks in terms of

advancement and maturity. This is so evident, that De Asis details how creative absurdity had

become a trend, as shown by such unconventional ads as Sen. TG Guingona’s 2013 Campaign of

“Galit sa Buwaya” and its ads, complete with a cartoon crocodile being smashed by an angry

looking Guingona.

However, 2013’s senatorial first placer Sen. Grace Poe, who was ironically Guingona’s

running mate, had one of the most successful and most mature and well thought-of political

campaigns in Philippine electoral history according to several analysts. Her campaign went well

beyond political marketing norms, and proved to be extremely successful for then candidate Poe

who was lagging behind the surveys.

This paper attempts to scrutinize the condition of political marketing in the country and

provide an analysis of a healthy political marketing environment by looking at successful foreign

political campaigns, and provide insights on how to improve the state of political marketing in

the country by analyzing the successes of Sen. Poe’s 2013 campaign, and later on provide a brief

summary proposition for her 2016 Presidential Campaign based on these marketing principles.

A Mature Political Marketing Environment & the State of Filipino Campaigns

De Asis, in one of her articles on the Philippine Daily Inquirer, details what are required

for a mature political environment, using the 2008 Presidential Campaign of Pres. Barack Obama

and the 1997 New Labour Campaign of Tony Blair as bases for her analysis.

First on her list, and the basis for much of political marketing activity, is electoral market

research. Much as in the concept of primary market research or PMR in conventional marketing,

this is required to understand the customers (voters in political marketing) and relate their needs

and wants and relate it to the value, or even create value in relation to these needs and wants, for

the politician. This is done in order to focus on specific customer segments, or attempt to appeal

to broader or different segments, and understand the typical voter profile for the candidate’s

targeted marketing strategy. They do this by conducting focus group discussions and studies, as

well as other forms of mass surveys. Based on this data, candidates must understand how they

should relate to their chosen target voters and work on these as strengths. They can also ascertain

their weakness and opportunity areas based on these studies, and work on their branding and

their means of delivery. A key factor as well, especially for re-electionists or for those who have

previous experience in the public sphere, candidates, through their branding and various

speeches and ad appearances, must be able to bridge their previous work experience and their

value proposition and connect it with what research shows to be the pre-conceived notions of

their target segments. Campaign teams must therefore work well with the data that they gather,

and must be able to brand, package, and tweak their candidate’s ads and speeches to fit to these

notions all while keeping the candidate’s brand, to ensure the effectiveness of the candidate in

generating voter intent. For example, Change and Hope, the theme of Barack Obama’s 2008

Presidential Campaign, was, to the American voter, clearly relatable and consistent with

Obama’s image as a progressive senator and as a force for change both within the US

Government and even the Democratic Party.

As mentioned in the Introduction, many of the political campaign strategies of several

candidates are based on political folk wisdom rather than carefully crafted and scientific

strategies. This is largely because of an immature political marketing environment, proliferated

by the continuous success of candidates who employ such strategies and therefore give off the

false notions of the effectiveness of such marketing styles. Also, with any individual, service, or

product, that is being marketed, lack of research causes a fundamental disconnect between the

targeted voter or consumer with the branding and the value proposition of the entity being

marketed. This is evidenced by the case of Dick Gordon, veteran statesman and effective public

servant, who ran for President in 2010 and then Senator in 2013, losing on both occasions, and is

widely attributed to the former senator’s arrogant and unyielding style which turned off many of

the youth, a crucial part of his agenda, and therefore a key target segment. This could have been

mended or augmented by identifying particular soft points and pain points in his target segment

and thereafter working on said characteristics by employing social media strategies or other such

forms of work that could be used to balance out what was perceived to be “arrogance” and offset

it with a listening, engaging attitude that could have been exuded by a well-executed, research-

backed social media style of campaigning.

The next key factor as described by De Asis: which is mainly evidence for the voters that

the candidate is able to deliver. Again, this is heavily based on the candidate’s previous track

record, and how relatable this is to his branding, his platform, and the position he is seeking.

Though it is a drastic over-simplification of Filipino voting patterns to say that Filipinos vote

solely in terms of recall, and though there is strong evidence suggesting a sense of societal

collective nostalgia (what with former scandal-mired political families such as the Estradas or

the Marcoses still in prominent roles in politics), track record is indeed important to the Filipino

voter. This is primarily related to “brand trust”, as, to the voter, if a candidate was able to deliver

whatever he or she aimed to deliver in a previous post, he or she will then be in all likeliness be

able to deliver in this new position that is sought after.

The effectiveness of this concept of track record reliability and brand trust is evident in

Sec. Mar Roxas, who, in 2004, ran with the marketing brand of “Mr. Palengke”, running on his

previous experience as an effective Secretary of Agriculture. Relatively unknown at the time and

considered to be a neophyte candidate and an unlikely winner only seven months prior to the

elections, Roxas was able to become the number one senator of that year, amassing over 57% of

the vote, that is, 19 million votes, 4 million ahead of the next contender Senator Revilla. His ads

were also distinctly memorable, using popular songs at the time and depicting him in a series of

wet markets interacting with vendors and customers. In short, he effectively built on his

previous, identifiable track record, and used this to address a specific pain point of the Filipino

voter: reliability. Compare this to say, senatorial candidate and former Congresswoman Risa

Hontiveros, who had an excellent legislative track record and voting record on issues concerning

her target segment (women and the youth), she instead chose to focus on being “the progressive”

candidate, a type of branding too broad and too scattered and unidentifiable to her previous track

record, thereby generating dissonance among her voter segment.

Building on this concept of track record reliability, the candidate and his marketing team

must create a benefit statement, something more known to students of marketing as a value

proposition. Much like the conventional understanding of value propositions, it must be a benefit

statement that is targeted towards a specific segment, and the object marketed must live up to the

expectations they have set by broadcasting their value proposition. Their value proposition must

also be easily identifiable and readily evident upon accomplishment, as well as finding backing

in the candidate’s history and previous experience. As such, value propositions often act as the

campaign’s battle cry and platform, the statement that exudes the entire purpose of the candidate

and the whole idea behind the platform. To be assured of the viability of the value proposition,

the candidate must also be able to depict that he will be able to effectively live up to this value

proposition, much as how companies need to live up to the promises they deliver based on their

value prop. This is matched with another concept discussed by De Asis, which is enhancing

packaging, meaning that the candidate must embody the value proposition and totally represent

this benefit concept up until physical appearances.

For example, when Cong. Gilbert Remulla ran for the senate in 2010, he was widely

considered to have the perfect image for the perfect, young politician in a new age of Philippine

politics. He was educated in prestigious universities here and abroad, he had worked in CNN and

was at one point a very popular newsman on GMA 7. To top it all of, he is a very good-looking

individual and is very confident in front of audiences. However, he sorely lacked a clear and

coherent benefit statement and value proposition and therefore an understandable platform. To

many voters, the value proposition is a simple way of understanding a candidate’s platform and

beliefs, and the lack thereof is detrimental to the cause of generating voting intent among

electoral segments.

Lastly, De Asis claims that candidates must be able to create conversation value using his

speeches and campaign material. Citing Greg Garcia in an article about him by the Philippine

Daily Inquirer, conversation value is increasingly important especially in the advent of such a

tool as social media, where it must be used to “get users involved in political discussions” and

must “not be used as a microphone”. This means that there is a widely significant and very

accessible equalizing avenue for discussions regarding politics, and thus word of mouth becomes

a significant factor in campaigns once again. Word of mouth obviously requires significant

material to create buzz among the targeted voters, hence there must be many buzz-worthy

moments in a candidate’s events and speeches. There must also be a wide presence of sharable

publication materials that would be able to go viral on the web, and therefore reach a larger

number of people.

In the 2013 General Elections, an aspiring returning senator, former Sen. Ramon

Magsaysay, Jr., was considered by many pundits to be a viable senatorial choice, given his

previous experience working in the senate and his extensive public service background. Aside

from all that, he is the son and namesake of his famous father, Pres. Ramon Magsaysay, one of

the most popular presidents and historical figures in Philippine history. However, he placed 16th

overall during the senatorial elections and was therefore not elected, primarily because he failed

to penetrate the social media avenues of his desired voter segment, and was therefore unable to

beat other candidates in terms of word of mouth and conversation value. This can also be

attributed to a weak digital presence and TV presence, and attributed to his banking on the more

traditional political marketing techniques of targeting specific regional segments and using name

recall as a tool for garnering votes.

Grace Poe, Her Personal Background, and “Tatak FPJ”

Then senatorial candidate Grace Poe Llamanzares was very new in the political scene,

and was widely considered to be a new entrant in the field. She did, however, have prior

experience as Movie and Television Review and Classification Board or MTRCB Chairwoman,

and was very effective in restructuring what was once considered to be an ineffective and

unnecessary arm of the government. She was able to effectively implement structural changes to

the office, and she was able to bring about a new rating process and significant ad campaigns that

boosted awareness about television and movie audience appropriateness ratings.

That is, however, Grace Poe’s only prior engagement in the field of public service. She

was, however, prominent as President of FPJ Productions, restoring many of the old classics of

her father, Fernando Poe, Jr., and distributing them to many small local cinema outlets and the

major Filipino box office channels, thereby increasing income for the production house, which

still maintains many employees and a production warehouse and office in Quezon City. She is

also a graduate of political science from Boston College and was, at one point, a Development

Studies major at the University of the Philippines. She has also amassed significant campaigning

experience during her father’s presidential campaign in 2004.

Beyond all this, however, she is more widely known as the daughter of Filipino cinema

megastar Fernando Poe, Jr., or FPJ, and widely popular actress Susan Roces. FPJ’s “masa”

appeal and the huge scandal involving him being allegedly cheated out of the presidency by Pres.

Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has embedded the FPJ brand in political history, and Grace Poe herself

is widely seen as connected and integral to the FPJ brand as the daughter of this prominent

power couple.

FPJ’s brand in itself is seen as a very popular one, considering his prominence in the

Filipino cinematic industry. The man himself is a brand of his own, with a signature look of

leather jackets, jeans, and a white shirt, and an Elvis-style haircut. His roles have also been

historically close to the most marginalized members of society, with him often appearing as

individuals who have been oppressed by the elite and seeking revenge for injustices he has

experienced. He embodies a perfect proletarian hero in his films, and represents someone that is

totally relatable to the everyday Filipino. In the words of his own grandson, Brian Poe

Llamanzares, Campaign Coordinating Executive of Sen. Grace Poe’s 2013 Senatorial Campaign,

FPJ “is the kind of guy you can have a San Miguel with”, hence his transcendent appeal with the

Filipino masses.

Grace Poe, in her own words, was by no means built to be a celebrity in the mold of her

parents, and was a typical Assumption alum who at one point taught pre-school children when

she migrated to the United States with her husband. However, immediately after the 2004 Hello

Garci Scandal, and after the death of FPJ, she was thrust into the media spotlight and thereafter

the Filipino collective psyche, with images of the Poe family first mourning a lost election and

then a lost father.

This had built her into the collective consciousness, and in 2010 was remembered by the

newly elected President Benigno Aquino III, thereafter appointing her to modernize the MTRCB.

She built her own brand along the mold of his father, and gathered massive media and show

business support using her father’s old cadres who at the time already held massive sway over

corporate media matters, thereby ensuring an effective transformation project for the MTRCB.

A Smart & Disciplined Campaign of the Consensus Candidate

When Grace Poe decided to run for a seat in the Senate, many of the survey agencies

placed her in the bottom 20s in preference polls based on survey respondents as soon as word got

out. She also had a relatively small budget to use for campaigning, including only P60 to P70

Million for television, print, and online ads, according to the Senator herself in an interview with

Kathlyn Dela Cruz of ABS-CBN News. Compared to the staggering ad expenses of such

candidates as Cynthia Villar, who spent nearly P200 Million, the campaign team of Grace Poe

had very little legroom to work with. She was also a neophyte, and quite the outsider in

traditional political circles in her own rite. However, Grace Poe’s campaign showed marketing

mantle and highly advanced and discipline political marketing techniques, fitting the descriptions

of De Asis in the first section of this research. This led her to become the number one Senator of

the 2013 Elections, a win from behind, with her amassing 20 million votes, above 50% of all

senatorial votes cast.

In an analysis by Camille Naredo, a senior political correspondent for ABS-CBN News,

the “magic” win as it was dubbed was primarily because of two factors: 1) she ran a smart and

disciplined campaign, and 2) she was the consensus candidate. These are stipulations that I tend

to agree with.

Her campaign was indeed smart and disciplined, and she was very much focused on her

relationship to her father FPJ. At first glance, this may be considered a very “traditional” move,

with such candidates as Sen. Pia Cayetano and then Sen. Noynoy Aquino using their famous

parents (Senator Rene Cayetano and Sen. and Pres. Cory Aquino) as campaign points in the 2004

and 2010 Elections, respectively. However, she was very disciplined in focusing her entire value

proposition and her branding and packaging into a single benefit statement that she is FPJ’s

daughter and she will continue her legacy. She does this by employing two different campaign

slogans at two different points of the campaign, “Anak ni FPJ” during the earlier stages of the

senatorial elections and then “Tatak FPJ” in the latter part. In these brief, benefit

statements/value propositions, she is able to capture the entire message behind her campaign:

that she will continue the FPJ legacy of the empowerment of masses and bringing governance

closer to the people (addressing the loyal FPJ mass-based segments) and campaigning for clean

elections and cleaner governance in general (addressing those who were affected by the sight of

the massive cheating scandal of 2004). She did not need to incessantly bombard the audience

with a long platform, as she was able to efficiently encapsulate all her political ideas (which were

already readily available on her social media accounts and her website) and all the sentiment

around her father in a single value proposition statement.

In debates, which she was very active in, she was able to show her mantle and thereby

destroy any notions that she was just a typical “traditional politician” who was banking on her

parents’ fame as popular figures. She was very active in these debates, and made a point of

attending almost all broadcast events, especially the ones held by prominent universities such as

the University of the Philippines and the Ateneo de Manila University, thereby embedding

within the minds of the powerful youth vote that she is ready to engage not only with the media

and the general public, but the youth as well, increasing her relevance and credibility as one of

the “smart” choices of candidates. This was held into contrast with Sen. Nancy Binay according

to an analysis of the situation by political pundit Malou Mangahas, with her saying that “both

had famous fathers, but Grace Poe was seen and heard and Nancy was not”, thereby giving

credence in the minds of the voters to the assumption that Poe is a viable choice.

Her performances in her public appearances, as well as her strong statements made on

issues that reached viral status because of all the sharing on social media, made her appear to be

very capable of living up to her benefit statements. Her previous track record and her perceived

newness in the political field also made it better, with many of the voters being predisposed to

voting for newer choices.

That being said, it is safe to say that her campaign had key elements of a good value

proposition and track record credibility, with her strong single minded benefit statements and

campaign battle cry, her living up to previous notions of herself as a brand, and her strong public

appearances that contributed to ensuring an aura of credibility and reliability in her as a public

figure.

Another important factor is, in her statements to the press and to the public, she did not

attempt to use her campaign slogan and benefit statement to address unrelated issues. For

example, in questions about the Reproductive Health Bill, she gave her own statement related to

her mantra of bringing governance closer to the people, but did not force the “Tatak FPJ” battle

cry at this instance or any other instance that had no relevance to the branding.

Also, to enhance her position, her political marketers opted for emphasizing her track

record credibility and her FPJ-centered branding by getting her mother, Susan Roces, to

campaign for her and actively appear alongside her in different sorties and campaign events.

To continue on Naredo’s observations, the second proximate reason behind Grace Poe

amassing that much popular support was that she was the consensus candidate. She ran as an

independent candidate, and, initially, she was a guest candidate of both major tickets, the

administration’s Team PNoy Coalition and the opposition’s United Nationalist Alliance or UNA

Coalition. She was then, however, dropped by UNA yet still remained as a guest of the Aquino-

backed coalition.

Her central political configuration is also widely because of the current political situation

post-2010, where both the administration and the opposition were a single, loosely organized

faction in the form of the Genuine Opposition against Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, touted as

FPJ’s rival. Hence, it was easy for both sides of the post-2010 political spectrum to side with

Grace Poe, given their common political heritage. Being in consensus meant that she was able to

enjoy the active and passive support of the political machineries of two mega coalitions, the

administration and Cojuangco-Aquino supported Team PNoy, with whom Poe had forged a good

working relationship with when she was MTRCB Chair under Pres. Aquino, and also the UNA

Coalition where lifelong family friend and FPJ’s best friend former President Joseph Estrada is

the political stalwart and man in charge. This also allowed her to increase her Total Addressable

Market, by being officially endorsed by two coalitions whose bases of support are entirely

different yet complementary, allowing her access to different regional bases and income

brackets. To quote political analyst Malou Tiquia, she was “the winning candidate on both

ballots”.

Both this unifying message and the unified political relationship wherein she enjoyed

multilateral support from across different political plains as a consensus candidate allowed for

her to be a clear, obvious, and straightforward candidate and therefore choice to become a

winning senator. However, one of the main clinchers and the main drivers as to why Grace Poe

became number one was also how she was able to actively engage her target segment, to be

discussed in the next section.

“Tao POE?”

As we have mentioned earlier, Poe’s campaign expenses only amounted to P60 to P70

Million, and were used for television ads, as well as print and online ads. Her television presence

was not as much as the Binays or the other candidates, but she had an effective campaign ad that

made use of puns on her last name of “Poe”, using the Filipino words of “po” and “opo”. She

used this form of wordplay in many forms of media, including on ads and on campaign

merchandise, as well as on social media through various hashtgas and whatnot all over Facebook

and on Twitter. Such puns were so humorous in nature, which they became trending and viral all

over social media websites, and thereafter reached a wider audience than those who were simply

just watching on television. In this age of social media, and the prevalence of “memes” on the

Internet as carriers of humor and social jokes and references, the name strategy employed by

Team Poe became a talking point among many users of Facebook and on Twitter, thereby

entering into everyday discussions. This emphasizes how the political marketing team carefully

crafted this marketing device and used it as a tool to generate conversation value, ridiculous as it

may seem on certain levels. Its effectiveness, however, is no doubt very helpful in creating social

media attention.

This works on the level of name recall, and, though as we have earlier mentioned, name

recall is definitely not the only thing that allows a candidate to win an election, it definitely aides

in generating enough media and social media buzz as traction to launch other significant and

hard-hitting marketing devices. This also gives way for instant recognition from among the

voters, and thereafter gives the voter ease in “knowing” the candidate. Such online media

presence, humorous marketing devices, and other such humanizing campaign ads, all contribute

to allowing the voter to transform their idea of the candidate from just an image or a distant

figure into a real person. Quoting Philippine Advertising Counselor veteran Louie Morales in an

Inquirer article, such techniques lets voters “feel that they know you”. This is crucial in terms of

political marketing as it allows voters to relate to the candidate even more, and therefore

stimulate voting intent among the individuals.

Such strong presence on social media and in day-to-day conversations emphasizes how

the political marketing team of Grace Poe highly values community engagement, which is

furthered by other such strategies in their employ. Such strategic moves are very much in line

with Poe’s style and value proposition, of being a people’s candidate, and is highly evidenced by

community-centered campaigning.

This is seen in the “lugawans” or soup kitchens (in reality, they were more local

community gatherings of Poe supporters in barangay and municipal multipurpose halls) that

were put up by community support systems of the Poe campaign. Such establishments were put

up in order to gather community donations for the campaign, and also acted as channels where

the national campaign can coordinate with grassroots campaigning outfits that usually manage

these lugawans and vice versa. Poe herself mentions that the “citizenry would take an active

role” in many of her campaigns, with various sorties she held in the provinces being

independently organized events, i.e., were not planned and only coordinated by the national

campaigning team. Here we see how she made it to the highest spot on the senatorial list without

having to partner up with dynastic political families with local strongholds under their political

influence, as her support base grew organically from community bases that were not artificially

installed by well-entrenched and long-standing political families. This is also how she surpassed

the fact that she held no strong regional base in herself, given that she does not have a “home”

province. Due to the wide community appeal, and how engaging her team was in encouraging

and partnering up with these efforts, she solidified local strongholds with minimal direct costs

and maximum effectiveness.

All in all, this highlights Poe and her team’s simple community campaign strategy: be

talked about by the people, talk to the people, and be talked to by the people.

The Road(blocks) to Malacañang

On September 16, 2015, in front of family and a large number of her supporters, Sen.

Grace Poe announced her intentions to run for the highest position in the land in 2016. For the

several months prior, she had been touted as a likely frontrunner and was a favorite for political

speculators for the 2016 General Elections, much due to her solid electoral performance in the

2013 Elections.

Aside from this, she also scores very highly in her performance approval ratings, mainly

because of her solid legislative performance and her continuous appearances in the media as a

progressive force in the Senate. She chaired the Senate’s Peace & Order Committee, and

presided over the Senate inquiry on the Mamasapano Incident, where 44 members of the Special

Action Force of the Philippine National Police (PNP-SAF) were led into a brutal ambush through

misguided orders along the chain of command. Rising national support for the SAF44 as they

were called, as well as growing anti-administration sentiment regarding the issue caused her to

be thrust once again into the mantle of the national spotlight, albeit tarnishing her rapport with

the Liberal administration, to an extent. She had also been the forerunner of the campaign for the

passage of the Freedom of Information Bill, a bill proposing the creations of several mediums

and avenues wherein the public will be able to see and scrutinize government transactions and

other government processes, all for the sake of ensuring a transparent and clean government.

These two factors allowed for even more media and social media attention, given that both of

these issues are concerns of the very active social media user segment.

Though amidst a myriad of supporters and claims of support, there have also been many

detractors and many advising her to not run for the Office of the President. Much of the initial

opposition to her running was grounded on the position that she should instead seek the Vice

Presidency instead of the Presidency, and she received offers from both sides of the political

spectrum once again, from the Liberal Party and its supporters and the United Nationalist

Alliance. The obvious bets of both sides, former Department of Interior and Local Government

Secretary Mar Roxas for the administration and majority opposition and UNA standard-bearer

Vice President Jejomar Binay, have wooed Grace Poe in an attempt to get her to run as their

Vice Presidents. However, Poe stood adamant and, for one reason or another, chose to remain

steadfast in her pursuit to seek the presidency.

Her decision pitted her against both sides of the political spectrum, and alienated her

from the machinery-rich support structures of both major coalitions. She thereafter decided on

remaining to be an independent candidate for the 2016 Elections, a contentious political move.

Her status as a political independent, and perhaps as an act of retribution from specific

power cliques within the major opposition parties, has left her susceptible to various attacks

based on her inexperience as a public officer and even her citizenship. The latter reason has

caused much stir within the media, with the most ill-intentioned political players and even some

respected figures such as former Senator Kit Tatad backing claims of disqualifying Senator Poe

based on her citizenship. Early on, many politicians, mostly from the UNA Coalition, questioned

the nature of Poe’s citizenship based on her status as a foundling and an adopted daughter of

Filipino parents. Absurd as it was, this gained significant media traction both on television and

online, with major news websites such as Rappler making this a key discussion point in the

weeks of its media relevance. This attack from UNA backfired on them, and caused them to drop

the allegations entirely, mainly due to the fact that it served to be in a way beneficial for Poe in

the sense that it humanized her even more in the eyes of the media and antagonized the attacking

politicians in the eyes of several women and youth groups, though not necessarily gaining points

for Poe.

The general issue, however, did not die down upon the retreat of the attacks from these

politicians. The issues regarding her citizenship evolved into an issue on migrant diaspora, as she

had immigrated to the United States and sought and attained US citizenship, at that point

revoking her Filipino citizenship in favor of her status as an American. This was a relatively

more advanced political attack, targeting nationalistic sentiment, though still soundly politically

immature. However, Poe’s team has yet, as of the writing of this paper, formulated any sound,

logical answers to this talking point.

Poe’s independence and refusal of the offers of both the administration and the UNA

Coalition has led her to be isolated, as we have mentioned, from nation-wide political

machineries that could target and enhance the reach and widen the extent of Poe’s support bases.

This has therefore led her to forge alliances with other independent power bases, such as her

recent forming of strategic partnerships with political families outside the typical scope of the

two major political coalitions. For example, she had chosen Senator Francis “Chiz” Escudero to

be her running mate, thereby gaining ample support from a core few members of the Nationalist

People’s Coalition or NPC as well as Escudero’s regional base of Sorsogon and Greater Bicol.

This was done to offset the demands of independent campaigning, and to compensate for

being outside the LP and UNA machinery. Another such example was when the Poe campaign

partnered with the Villafuerte family of Camarines Sur, a family mired in scandal and commonly

criticized to be exemplary of the dynastic pseudo-familial politics dominant in the countryside.

To summarize all her roadblocks, she is faced with issues regarding citizenship, she is

now currently aligned with a criticized subset of Philippine politics (traditional politicians, who

are touted to perform shabbily in the next elections given the rising anti-dynastic sentiment), and

summarily, she is alienated from the large political structures of the two major opposing parties.

Tatak FPJ 2016?

Grace Poe has already encountered several problems, as we have established in the

previous section. This was not helped by the scattered formulations in her recorded media

responses and press releases, especially now in a time wherein press statements may be easily

taken out of context, as what happened when she issued a statement in response to the Iglesia ni

Cristo (INC) EDSA Rallies.

Given that she now bears a not-so-stellar reputation, very much unlike her 2013

Elections, will Grace Poe Magic still remain unfazed and steadily sufficient to secure her for the

Office of the President of the Philippines?

To answer this question, we must first acknowledge that the circumstances surrounding

her run are very much different. To briefly review, she won and became top senator for the

following reasons: 1) she had a clear and concise benefit statement/value proposition, 2) she ran

a campaign and had a brand packaging consistent with her track record and her value

proposition, and 3) she actively engaged her target segments by releasing campaigns and ad

materials that had significant conversation value and she was able to infiltrate traditional and

online avenues via word of mouth.

Comparing her situation now, however, she no longer has a clear and concise benefit

statement, given that her initial premises of making government closer to the people and of

actively promoting and creating systems that will ensure clean and transparent government are

now at conflict with many of her political moves. She is now venturing in targeting too many

things without having a specific, consolidated agenda, with a benefit statement that is easily

replicable and with not much differentiation as other “progressive” candidates such as Roxas or

Binay. These principles are also inconsistent with her political moves. This includes partnering

with political dynasties in the provinces all in an attempt to compensate her lack of political

machineries. Such moves, though beneficial in a specific segment, drastically lowers the

credibility of her value prop.

And now, though she has made significant entries in conversation points – given her

status as a social media savvy politician that is relevant to the youth – many of the issues that

have been thrown at her have been negative in nature, and thus are not as engaging as her

previous social media talking points that she had in 2013, as most of the posts on her social

networking sites have become answers to questions instead of conversation points, with which

the latter is proven to be effective.

Conclusion

All in all, to be completely successful, Grace Poe must be adamant in keeping the Tatak

FPJ branding and must ally herself with the right people, and avoid situating herself with

established political dynasties that are contradictory to her image as a progressive candidate. She

must maintain this branding and this value proposition to be completely in line with her track

record and her previous experiences. She still, however, does stand a chance, especially if she

builds on her organic community support that she can tap into instead of the dynastic political

units.

To Conclude, Grace Poe must maintain her image and her value proposition, and

essentially follow her solid principled, community-driven political marketing strategy in order

for her to succeed, and in order for her to live up to everything that she promises.

References

Political marketing that sells? (n.d.) Retrieved October 3, 2015, from

http://karendeasis.com/v2/articles/political-marketing-that-sells-and-sizzles/

How campaign ads catapulted Grace Poe (n.d.) Retrieved October 11, 2015, from

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net.

How much did Grace Poe spend on her campaign? (n.d.) Retrieved October 10, 2015, from

http://www.abscbn-news.com

Wenceslao: Poe-Escudero Strategy (n.d.) Retrieved October 10, 2015, from

http://www.sunstar.com.ph