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AT quick glance, you will not exactly know what a leading Filipino
web portal like Yehey! has in common with a top fashion magazine,
the country’s largest sport store chain, a fat-burning fruit
juice, a string of crab-concept restaurants, mobile services for
overseas Filipino workers and a growing cosmetics line.
Until you get to talk to Donald Patrick L. Lim,
president and CEO of Yehey!
Not yet in his mid-30s, Lim already joins the
ranks of successful and innovative entrepreneurs and outstanding
brand builders under the age of 35 who were recently recognized at
the Third Young Market Masters Awards (YMMA) organized by Mansmith
and Fielders Inc. of noted marketing guru Josiah L. Go.
Despite the early achievement in his young,
decade-long career in the field of marketing, the architect behind
the “reloaded” and reengineered Yehey.com remains humble.
“Yehey! was never a marketing phenomenon—not
before, and not even now,” admits its president/CEO, who is also
the founder and president of the Internet and Mobile marketing
Association of the Philippines. “We are still in the process of
making it a superior marketing product. However, we have managed to
transform the entire Yehey Corp. from a technology company to a
spanking online marketing firm. From our people to our process, the
entire Teamyehey now breathes and speaks marketing.”
Lim confesses his initial reluctance to take up
a marketing course. In his speech at the YMMA awarding ceremonies,
he said marching orders from his mother and a mentor’s advice were
the simple yet practical reasons behind his forced entry into the
field.
“Marketing is all about being able to sell. I
have learned that a good marketer can sell to people things they
don’t need. An excellent marketer can sell to people what they
don’t want,” he says. And “with so many products that are no
good,” Lim says his mentor assured him he would never be jobless
in the field.
Being father to a 2-year-old daughter and a
year-old son exposed him a great deal about the power of marketing.
“I did not have enough choice but to get introduced to the world
of Barney,” he says. He marveled at how even Barney nonbelievers
like him got entrapped to shell out a hefty sum to sit for hours and
watch the purple dinosaur sing his popular “I love you, you love
me” ditty at the Araneta Coliseum.
“I should learn from Barney,” he says. The
lethal combination of aggressive and subtle promotional marketing,
word of mouth, and “pester power,” he says, transformed the
purple dinosaur into Hollywood hero stature.
While his own Yehey! is not exactly singing “I
love you, you love me” all the way to the bank, Lim says the
Filipino Internet portal has unleashed its own lethal combination of
having team talent, a winning mindset and aggressive marketing.
Yehey! recently launched its own rewards system and its version of
Yahoo! Answers (Pinoy Henyo) and Yahoo! Messenger (Yehey! TOL).
Soon, the portal will also introduce its own
virtual world called Dangka and the local version of YouTube. It is
also at the forefront of creating online marketing campaigns and
websites of several companies.
All these efforts, Lim says, are all geared
towards making Yehey! a marketing great. “Marketing is not as easy
as it looks nor as difficult as it seems. In the end, it is all
about passion, bringing out the Barney in you, and wanting to make a
difference,” he adds.
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