She comes into the room wearing a dress, denim jacket, and sandals on a Monday afternoon – not the usual attire you expect a company head would wear. But then, Emily Abrera is not your usual lady executive. When she was named President and CEO of McCann Erickson Philippines in 1992, women assigned to top agency posts were unheard of. Even uncommon was the fact that Emily came from the creative department. Back then, very few creative people would be named head, even of an advertising agency, the top position being reserved for finance or accounts officials.

As head of McCann – she assumed Chairmanship in 1999 – Emily has managed to keep the agency’s leadership position in the industry. But more importantly, she has challenged everything the agency had and brought it to a higher level – being active, responsible communicators.

In an interview with Philippine Business, Emily Abrera talks about advertising as a craft – and advertising as a medium to promote certain causes.

Has the advertising industry changed in the last ten years?
I think it has. Before, advertising was simply mass media advertising of radio, television, and print. Today, everybody’s surfing and watching six programs at one time. Just going back and forth, who’s going to stop at your ad? It’s so hard to get people in one place so that you can beam a specific message at them. We have to try and get people a little bit more involved with the brands.

Events have enabled consumers to actually interact and experience a brand firsthand rather than just see it on TV. The internet is another one. Relationship marketing or direct marketing is another one. People keep invigorating these other points of contact.

Now you see the billboards mushrooming everywhere. That’s a newly discovered medium. It’s rampant. In my opinion, it’s out of hand already. At some point no advertiser will want to buy anymore because it’s so cluttered. It’s such a mess that people will soon start averting their eyes from billboards because there’s just too much of it.

Also, I think people used to be more business-oriented. Most of the communications before were so functional. In other words, if you do an advertisement, there was a higher expectation that you see the returns immediately in terms of sales. As time went by, people were better able to understand that the process of advertising is a long-term one.

The times we live in are much more transparent than they used to be. You can’t keep things anymore, everybody knows what’s going on. The more we know, the harder it is to make people buy only on the basis of the functionality of something. Brands have gotten to mean much more than that, so brand-building has become more complex and much more highly competitive than it used to be. This takes you to the point where corporate social commitment is much higher on the list of consumers than it used to be.

How do Philippine advertisements compare with those of other countries?
I think they have improved tremendously. We always say that Filipinos are really creative people, and I think we are. There’s a lot of creative people here that in the next few years, we’ll see more and better ads, ads that will be able to compete outside the country.

However, I think there should be more Asians in juries in the future so that there will be a better understanding on why some things work better on a local basis. I’m not so sure if we’ve answered the question of global communication and whether truly great creatives should be able to travel. I think if you’re talking about universal values, yes, they would travel. But not all advertising is about universal values.

Some of them are extremely local in reference and appreciation, so that you might produce something that has tremendous impact locally but nobody from the US can understand.

It’s just how it is. We must serve the local clients. It’s great to win awards, but we can’t be producing ads because we want to win awards. We have to be producing ads because we want to serve the clients’ interests, and we want to build brands. The way to do that is doing outstanding creative. But we can’t be wagged by another tail.

How is competition among advertising agencies in the Philippines?
Steep. We don’t win all the bids. But we have an excellent strategic planning group. We have a good track record so for many clients, if they want their money to be intelligently spent, I think we can offer them a certain amount of confidence that if they get us, they will.

Before, our problem was always small clients are afraid of big agencies, but our bread and butter are really the small clients. You could count in one hand our accounts that are really big. We have 70 different accounts and only ten of them are P100 million and above. All the rest of them are lower than that – P60-P70 million budgets.

McCann has been known for advocacy advertising. How were you able to institutionalize this kind of advertising?
We’ve been known for advocacy advertising for the past ten years or so. Maybe it was part of our evolution. In 1992, we became a Filipino-owned agency. We used to be a wholly-owned subsidiary of McCann Worldwide. In 1992, according to the Constitution, we had to be Filipinized. McCann had to have a Filipino head so I was named President. Along with this, we went through a process that tried to identify who we were and what aspects of leadership we felt we have to live by.

At that time, we had been the leader in the industry for five years already – we had the biggest billings. We didn’t necessarily feel that we were leading anything except in billings, so we wanted to give substance to that claim.

We began looking for ways where we could have something different and original to contribute to society in general and to give back to the community. And so at the end of that year, we released the “don’t fire your guns at New Year” ad. That’s the first time somebody did something like that. We produced two spots. And then immediately after that we did something for the environment as well.

After that, we had a small budget set aside to celebrate our anniversary. We first planned to do what we’ve always done – throw a party, invite the clients. But we thought, maybe there is a different way we can celebrate. Seemed to us that there were so many things that needed to be done on a social level. So we decided to take that money and we embarked on our first youth study in Manila.

We have a very good research division here. But a lot of the research we did was usually based on a client’s need and very often the client will spend for it. This time we wanted to do something ourselves, where we would own the data. And we could do the study the way we wanted to do it. When we did the first youth study, we were surprised by the results.

There are two phases. One was really behavior as far as consumption patterns that had to do with the different clients of McCann. This is stuff that we had to do for our clients. But a lot of it was also attitudinal and a psychographic profiling of the youth. Those were the parts that to us were more meaningful.

After sharing the findings with the clients, we also shared it with other groups – schools, government agencies, and churches. We then discovered that here was a role that we could play – that of a catalyst in terms of raising questions and issues that we thought we should find answers to as responsible communicators.

We discovered that there was a leadership aspect that others haven’t yet touched – that we could be a pioneer and set a good example for other groups to follow. After that youth study, other groups made their own. It focused public attention on the youth and what they needed.

Following that youth study, we did a male study, a housewife study. And then little by little, we managed to increase our budget so that at some point we are able to do national scales already. The last study we did was in 2000. We will refresh that maybe next year.

Today, we have a tremendous data bank that stretches over 12 years. You can really see that we’re changing. Even the way women perceive themselves, and on kids and youth marketing – it gave us an edge, which is good because a lot of the brands that we handle are aimed at the young market.

Having been in the advertising industry for more than two decades, do you have plans of slowing down?
I don’t think so. There are so many things that I still have to do. It’s like I don’t have enough hours in the day. But I think my life is a little bit kinder to my family today because at least I have my weekends. When I was creative director, I had to spend late nights and a lot of weekends at production shoots. At least today I have a choice of spending my weekends doing other stuff, not necessarily work.

I love doing this. It’s work that I enjoy. I don’t think a lot of people are blessed with being in a job that they also enjoy doing. But I have to say that I enjoy it because it allows me to be able to be active beyond just the business of McCann Erickson. I sit on the Board of other NGO groups. I am able to help with other communication needs that we feel are also important.

How would you describe yourself as an executive?
What you see is what you get. I dress the way I feel like dressing, so half the time I come in sandals and whatever I want to wear. Maybe it’s because of the fact that I came from creative. From creative, we were always allowed to show on the outside what we feel on the inside. Maybe that’s also my basic personality, so there are no rituals that need to be observed.

I like walking around. I like being involved. I like knowing people and knowing how things work. I enjoy being part of the planning. I’ve also always believed that at McCann, nobody gets paid to push paper around. We’re all hands-on. Everybody really works. The day that I can’t contribute to a client’s business by being involved in his communication, then I should go because then I will have no use. That’s what I’m paid for, that’s what I’ve always believed I’m paid for.

I’m not paid to just look at the numbers and say “McCann is going to make money this year.” Here we have one principle – when our clients make money, then we make money. But if we cannot even help them with that, then we should really be ashamed of ourselves because that’s our job. If our clients win, then we also win.

Let’s not worry about competition. That’s the part that I think is of least importance. It’s okay that when you do your planning you want to know where you are vis-à-vis your competition and what they are doing. But the far more important thing is to remember who our clients are and how we can help them earn.

I have a simple philosophy: I like people, I love the creative work. I love the creative process. I am passionate about the things we believe in. I have always felt that there are few things we live by – truth is one of them. So honesty and integrity are so important. I preach these. I find ways of imparting these to people because I want it to be my legacy. When I go, I want to be able to leave something behind – good people, people who believe in what they do, people who care about each other.

I delight in sitting at strategic planning sessions, in the training, in the planning, even in the creative reviews – I love that and I still do that. And I think there’s a benefit in the coming together of people who have the experience and hindsight, and the fresh thinkers. We try to see things the way they see them, they try to see things the way we see them. It’s always a lively exchange. My management style is a very personal one.

I’ve been here 25 years. I see so many of them grow up and become really good at what they do and I take great pride in that.