In the Philippines, we have no restrictions on branded content. PLDT myDSL was, however, restricted from airing on the country's 2 leading television channels since 2010. To make up for our lack of TV presence, we looked to branded online content. Anna Banana campaign for PLDT myDSL was 1 of the biggest campaigns in the Philippines for 2012. It started with an online branded content launch and a traditional media reveal. The Philippines is in its infancy when it comes to branded content and this campaign was a breakthrough for branded content in this country. The results speak for themselves. 1.8m hits on YouTube in less than 5 weeks. P2.1m in free media during the campaign period. The branded content online and on air resulted in 62% awareness, the highest for any PLDT retail brand in recent history.

We brought to life the idea, 'the strongest connections are at home', by creating a fictitious boy, who we named Derek S. Lorenzo and created his fictitious ultra-supportive mom, 'Mama Berns'.

We started by uploading an unbranded YouTube video of 'Derek S. Lorenzo' singing an original song entitled Anna Banana for his crush. It was terrible, making it, literally, a video only a mother can love.

His fictitious mom drummed up support for the video through her blog, Twitter feeds, comments on forums and cold calls on radio talk shows. A couple of weeks later, we did a reveal with TV, print, radio, digital. All materials drove viewers to the YouTube channel, now re-skinned to become a branded PLDT myDSL channel. This revealed that Derek S. Lorenzo (DSL) was actually myDSL. Over the course of several weeks, we created 'user-generated' videos, or rather, us-generated videos sustaining interest in the campaign.

Anna Banana is probably the most viewed branded video in the Philippines. It was featured by TV Patrol as the most watched video in the country in February and trending in twitter in mid-February. It has over 30 copycat videos with almost 2m combined views. It’s been reposted by other YouTube users, shared across blogs and Facebook, and mentioned in user and celebrity tweets, catching 667,990 eyeballs. It’s been talked about in radio shows as well as featured in TV news, broadsheets and magazines, giving us an estimated P2.1m in free media. During the campaign, the PLDT myDSL website got a 30% increase in total visits. 200% increase in applications versus previous quarter. 30% revenue increase for PLDT myDSL versus same time previous year. Post-launch tests showed that 93% of respondents now find the brand more appealing and 83% say that it is better than other internet services. The campaign gave us 62% awareness after 4 weeks - the highest rate of advertising awareness for any PLDT retail brand since 2010. Not bad for a video that only a mother can love.