From Billboard to Boat to Bronze: Havas Media Ortega gets an accolade at the 2019 Spikes Asia Festival of Creativity

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Banners and waiting shed billboards have been turned into rafts and stretchers.

Havas Media Ortega bags a Bronze Award at the 2019 Spikes Asia Festival of Creativity in the Media Category (Ambient Media: Large Scale), for its innovative crisis response to typhoons and floods entitled “Project S.A.V.E”.

The agency pioneered this initiative with Valenzuela City, one of the most flood-prone cities in Manila the capital of the Philippines, with the vision of turning underutilized resources into life-saving devices. This project developed and designed the materials with advice from volunteer first responders, local government officials, and national disaster coordinators. 

Project S.A.V.E, which stands for Signage & Adspace Versatile for Emergencies, aims to equip cities with emergency equipment come floods, earthquakes, and other calamities through innovative use of outdoor marketing materials. Billboards, banners, and waiting sheds are turned into detachable disaster-ready boats, life rafts, spineboards, and other disaster response tools using outdoor ad materials from past campaigns, which would otherwise have been thrown away. The idea takes advantage of the easy visibility of outdoor ads. Quick to spot and accessible to the public, residents can quickly remember that these tools are at their disposal should they be needed. 

“This year, our battle cry with the Havas Group is to create a meaningful difference to brands, businesses and the lives of the people we work with. We’re honored to have been recognized by Spikes Asia as we continue to help the community in an inventive way that they’re open to,” says Hermie de Leon, Managing Partner of Havas Ortega and CEO of Havas Media Group. 

Rommell Garcia, Business Director of Havas Creative who led this project, also shares, "We hope that Project S.A.V.E will inspire the industry and get the momentum going in coming up with ideas that can make a meaningful difference in Filipino lives."

“We are grateful that our long experience with floods has taught us that more access to stretchers, emergency tents, and life rafts preserves lives. We’re grateful that this need was able to be executed creatively and was able to gain recognition in the ASEAN region. We do hope that this can set a new benchmark for the community to respond to crisis swiftly – anytime and anywhere” asserts City Mayor Rex Gatchalianof Valenzuela City.

The long play to Project S.A.V.E is being able to deploy these structures in other towns and municipalities that share the same predicament as Valenzuela.

ABOUT SPIKES ASIA AWARDS

The Spikes Asia Awards is the benchmark by which the region’s creativity is measured. For the past 32 years, since its inception as the Asian Advertising Awards in 1986, it has set the standard for creativity and effectiveness for Asia Pacific’s creative communications industry. The Awards are continually honed and redefined to ensure they reflect current trends in creative communications.

Havas Group Reimagines PR Group with Launch of Red Havas

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In line with its global rebranding, Havas PR Philippines becomes part of the Merged Media micro-network

As creative and media agencies face a near-daily redefinition of their identities and scopes of work in the modern media landscape, public relations agencies in particular are being completely reconstructed. How can PR companies adopt at the pace of today’s lighting-speed multimedia landscape?

The passionate and incredible REDsters of Red Havas Philippines (L-R): Marco Grajo, Account Manager; Jookie Radoc, Media Relations Manager; Charisse Vilchez, Business Unit Director; Janessa Tek-ing, Senior Account Manager and Cid Santillan, Account Director.

Havas Group, with its shared Merged Media strategy, announced that it has rebranded a number of its award-winning PR and social agencies including its Manila office under a new name, Red Havas. Through Merged Media, the micro-network reimagines the way it does PR and drives its agencies to new heights by blending traditional and digital publishing, content, social media, and data in a way that defines the future of PR as a category.

Red Havas’ office in Manila, Philippines is part of leading fully-integrated media and creative agency, Havas Ortega (HVO). Under the tutelage of Business Director Charisse Vilchez, Havas PR Manila will now be Red Havas Philippines, along with other Asia Pacific-based Red Agency networks in Australia, Singapore and Havas PR North America with offices in New York City, New England, Phoenix and Pittsburgh. In addition, Red Havas has rebranded its Havas PR offices in Vietnam and Jakarta, Manchester, Edinburgh and opened a new office in London. The new brand has expansion plans to Japan and South America within 18-24 months. 

“Havas Ortega welcomes the rebranding of our PR team to Red Havas. The current team is more than ready to take on the challenge and bring PR to the next level. Red Havas Philippines, together with its passionate and incredible REDsters, will help create our clients’ brand stories through Merged Media,” said HVO Chief Executive Officer Jos Ortega. “I am confident that with Char’s experience working in two strong online brands OLX and Agoda and her training at Red Havas in Australia, we will be able to live up to our ambition of owning Merged Media in the local scene.”

The rebranding coincides with global-led investments into data, content and bespoke insight tools, which will include listening and predictive analytics platforms that will layer in a foretelling media capability not seen before within the industry.

The passionate and incredible REDsters of Red Havas Philippines (L-R): Marion Esquillo, Havas Group Associate Creative Director; Marco Grajo, Account Manager; Charisse Vilchez, Business Unit Director; Jookie Radoc, Media Relations Manager; Janessa Tek-ing, Senior Account Manager and Cid Santillan, Account Director.

“The guiding light of PR has always been to integrate brands or organizations stories into the daily conversations of the media ecosystem,” said James Wright, global chairman of the Havas PR Collective and global CEO of Red Havas. “PR is one of the most powerful tools that brands can use to connect to audiences, but it’s essential that it integrates seamlessly across content types and sources and operates at the pace, and in the ways, of today’s consumer. With content, social and predictive data at the core, we’ve built a model that merges all of the various media sources and essentially redefines the PR capability entirely.”

Commenting on the global rebranding, Yannick Bollore, CEO and chairman of Havas Group, said: “Red Havas is a new, transformational and unmatched micro agency network that will help redefine PR and its value to clients. Along with the power of Havas Group and the world-class entertainment capabilities we have within Vivendi, the proposition of merged media becomes very interesting. We have big ambitions to develop and invest in this further.”

Red Havas is part of the Havas PR Global Collective, the PR and communications arm of the Havas Group that comprises approximately 40 agencies around the world and more than 1,300 employees. At this stage, there are no plans to rebrand other Havas-owned PR agencies.

About Red Havas

Red Havas is part of the Global Havas PR Global Collective and has offices in Australia (Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney), Philippines (Manila), Singapore, United Kingdom (London and Manchester) and the United States (Pittsburgh, Phoenix, New England and New York City). 

For further information, please visit: www.redhavas.com. 

About Havas Group

Havas is one of the world’s largest global communications groups. Founded in 1835 in Paris, the Group employs 20,000 people in more than 100 countries. Havas Group is committed to being the world’s best company at creating meaningful differences between people and brands through creativity, media and innovation. Based on a client-centric model across media and creative, Havas Group is the most integrated company in its sector. They operate with three business units (creative, media and healthcare & wellness) within the Havas Villages all over the world where teams share the same premises, ensuring agility and a seamless experience for clients. #makingbrandsmeaningful

Further information about Havas Group is available on the company’s website: havasgroup.com