Competing against giants that could afford the biggest foreign superstars, challenger telco brand, DITO instead looked inwards and burst the mainstream bubble by going hyperlocal. Celebrating young Filipinos’ growing appreciation towards emerging regional talents, the Galing DITO movement was born with a strong focus on a platform no telco had owned - TikTok.

The movement supported DITO’s goal of surpassing their year-end targets without the huge budgets and global endorsers of its established competitors. It even grew 30% of its business, making it the fastest-growing telco in the world, outdoing other telcos that were also built from the ground up.

In the Philippines, two telco giants have dominated the industry, Smart and Globe.

These two brands have been part of Filipinos’ lives for decades and can afford the biggest names in entertainment, like BLACKPINK, BTS, and Chris Evans to be their endorsers and are advertising on all major media platforms.

With just a tenth of the competitor’s budget and market share, challenger brand DITO Telecommunity needed to build brand awareness, relevance and affinity by inspiring Filipino pride on the digital platform that drives culture, TikTok.

The Philippines is an archipelago made up of 7,641 islands with different languages, cultures and talents. In mainstream entertainment, only Tagalog and English are used. For the campaign, we translated the Tagalog word “galing” into different Filipino languages.

GALING means “great talent.” DITO means "here". Together it means, “Great Talent is Here.” The movement tapped local artists with a niche following and of diverse cultural backgrounds to collaborate on an anthem that featured different Filipino languages, genres and indigenous instruments. Marga Jayy, a jazz singer from Manila, Cookie$, a rapper from Cebu, Fai Fai Flojo, a female rapper from Ilocos, Maan Chua, a folk singer from Davao, 13C, a pop boy band from Visayas, Nurainie Ampatuan, an indigenous percussionist, Dione, a P-Pop girl group to name a few. Unique acts represented the different cultures of the Philippines and inspired many more people to join in the movement through TikTok.

DITO wanted to capture the young trend followers: Gen Z Filipinos who identify as pop culture and leisure enthusiasts. They would readily join a cultural movement that resonates with them.

On social media, we identified that TikTok is Gen Z’s top social media platform. Though present on TikTok, most telco brands’ content is unengaging - mostly repurposing existing ads of their celebrity endorsers.

DITO burst this mainstream bubble (of big celebrities) and went hyperlocal.

Despite Filipinos being known to be great performers, brands continue to seek out foreign talents – notably from South Korea and the US. DITO created a counterculture and looked for emerging homegrown talents all over the country’s 7,641 islands. DITO championed diversity and inclusivity by putting the spotlight on a new breed of Filipino talent. This insight would be perfect for TikTok, the best platform for diverse and underrepresented talents.

Galing DITO was launched on June 12, 2022, the country’s Independence Day. The campaign ran for three months and met overwhelmingly positive sentiments. After the music video launch, we created even more content that focused on each local act through unique music videos and profiles. By supporting local artists, audiences expressed pride in seeing their local culture represented on multiple social media platforms like TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Spotify and Twitter.

In just three months, Galing DITO, being the only major campaign running at that time, reached its year-end targets. 60 million in reach, 404 million in impressions and 664 million total views across platforms.

DITO improved total brand awareness by 38%. Spontaneous awareness by 73% and increased Brand Desire by 75.8%. By championing local talent, DITO successfully grew from 9 million to over 12 million subscribers, setting the record for the fastest growth in the telco industry in the world, outdoing Jio (India) and Free Mobile (France), telcos that were also built from the ground up.

Audiences commended the brand for supporting local artists, with 45% of the talents and influencers featured from outside Manila. We saw a 33.64% average increase in TikTok followers after the campaign making DITO became the #2 most-followed telco brand on

Compared to the two telco giants in the Philippines, Globe and Smart, DITO lacked the budget, experience and credibility that our competitors had. This was also the only major campaign DITO launched in 2022 vs competitors’ multiple campaigns.

Despite Filipinos being known to be great performers, brands continue to seek out foreign talents – notably from South Korea and the US. DITO created a counterculture and looked for emerging homegrown talents all over the country’s 7,641 islands. DITO championed diversity and inclusivity by putting the spotlight on local talent.

The Philippines is made up of 7,641 islands, with different languages spoken and subcultures. Filipino and English are the most commonly used languages, while hundreds of local languages are not used in mainstream media.

In Filipino, the word “galing” has two meanings depending on how you say it. “Galíng” for “great talent” and “gáling” for “origin.” The varying pronunciations can be heard in the Galing DITO Anthem.

Galing DITO was launched on June 12, 2022, the country’s Independence Day. The campaign met overwhelmingly positive sentiments, with audiences commending the brand for supporting local artists and expressing pride for seeing their local culture represented.