Tutok Na campaign wins multicultural marketing award for UBI
From left to right: Nic Leviste, graphic designer; Michael Parker, CEO; Vijay Mirchandani, Head of Marketing & Creative Services; Regina Boulos, President; Andy Wright of the Commonwealth Bank; and Ben Boulos, Business Development Manager.
UBI TV was announced as winner of the Small Business Category of the Awards at a gala dinner in Sydney hosted by the Minister for Citizenship, Virginia Judge.
The National Multicultural Marketing Awards, conducted by the Community Relations Commission, celebrated their 20th anniversary tonight.
The award-winning campaign set out to boost subscriptions by 300 percent using a catchy multi-layered Filipino expression tutok na which could mean lots of different things like "point a satellite dish" or to "focus on singularity".
Congratulating UBI on their success, the Chair of the Commission, Stepan Kerkyasharian said tonight:
"UBI went all-out to achieve their goal, using sound multicultural marketing techniques. They hired Filipino-speaking staff, and swamped the community with ads in the Filipino press and with flyers at events, shops and outlets. They employed outdoor mobile advertising, transit buses plastered with campaign streamers, outdoor bill boards, shopping mall promotion, direct mail to names listed on Filipino databases, SMS messages to people listed on a database of Filipino mobile phone accounts, and radio ads on 'Pinoy' Radio in Sydney and Melbourne.
"They called on top-rating stars at home in the Philippines to be part of the promotion here. They also set up a Filipino call centre to handle inquiries and sign up new customers in their own language" he said.
The potential audience is believed to be 120 thousand Australians of Filipino background.
UBI currently offers 100 top-rating TV and Radio channels from 30 countries in 14 languages.
The Filipino satellite program aims to bring together the best of Filipino TV, covering news, current affairs, dramas, comedies, variety shows, game shows, gag shows, movies etc., as well as global news from home in English, religious and inspirational programs and contemporary music radio.
"The programme aims to keep people up-to-date with the current use of language, so they dont fall behind their cousins, back home, in speaking the language in a contemporary way.
"This is all pretty much classic multicultural marketing - pulling out all the stops and using every tool, every professional trick. They saturated and dominated a selected geographical area with a key message and simple call to action "Tutok Na" - targetting a specific segment of the Australian multicultural market", Mr Kerkyasharian said.
They achieved a 350% increase in subscriptions over the previous six months and, according to UBI, "Tutok Na" has become a catchphrase amongst members of the community.