Stakeholders air mixed views on foreign ownership of ad agencies

 

MANILA, Philippines —  Several stakeholders on Thursday aired their stance on proposals to relax foreign ownership of local advertising agencies as the Senate resumed its hearing on proposed amendments to the 1987 Constitution,

DDB Group Philippines Chief Culture Officer Anna Chua-Norbert admitted that their agency is “quite concerned” about the fresh Charter change initiative.

Citing her organization’s experience as a multinational agency, Chua-Norbert said foreign ownership did not add much “value” to their company, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic.

DDB is 97 percent locally owned.

“We have the majority of the operations in terms of being able to control hiring and managing whatnot our strategies. What we found during the Covid-19 pandemic though [is] that we were actually left on our own devices regardless of them being part of the global network so it really didn’t actually add value to us,” she said.

Apart from this, another major factor why they are leaning towards saying no to Cha-cha is that easing foreign ownership in the industry might entail Filipinos losing money to foreigners.

“We feel that the money will actually go overseas rather than get going to the local Filipinos — which we actually are seeing now more and more with Google and the likes of Meta,” said Chua-Norbert.

On editorial independence

United Print Multimedia Group Of The Philippines President Barbie Atienza, on the other hand, said he is for “liberating the entry of foreign investors,” but he likewise flagged the potential result of foreign ownership in advertising to editorial independence.

“One of the things that I personally would have some reservations about [is] opening it up for foreign investments is editorial independence,” said Atienza.

“The reality bites that advertisers have the money and who[ever] has the money, has a lot of clout. So therefore, we have seen this happen many many times over where an advertiser would have influence over the content,” he explained.

Self regulation regime must remain

Meanwhile, Ad Standards Council (ASC) Legal Counsel Rudolph “Regie” Jularbal said the foreign ownership would not be a problem as long as self regulation in the Philippines remains in place.

Unlike other countries, Jularbal said there is a “regime of self regulation” in the Philippines where content is checked even before it is aired.

“We believe we will leave the decision to the advertising industry. Meaning to say the advertising agencies affected by this provision, [but] as far as the ASC is concerned, as long as the self regulation regime is functional regardless of the ownership of advertising agencies, content will be regulated effectively,” said Jularbal.

“We have 50 years of self regulation in the Philippines and it has been very successful,” he added.