DITO, a challenger telco brand, competes against giants that have dominated the industry for decades and could afford the biggest international superstars as brand endorsers.

To stand out in an industry that promoted foreign pop culture, DITO instead celebrated the diversity in local pop culture from different regions of the country.

With the Galing DITO movement, the campaign surpassed DITO’s 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.

To grow even further, DITO determined that they had to strengthen their brand awareness and form a strong and positive positioning among Filipinos - especially the young trend followers. While Gen Z Filipinos have a global mindset and enjoy Hollywood & K-culture, they showed a strong desire to connect with their local heritage, with 41% listening to music to connect with their culture (Global Web Index). More than that, TikTok provided them with a platform to show off their talents and, subsequently, exposed them to a more diverse range of undiscovered local talents.

These were Gen Z Filipinos who were unafraid to try new things, with 78% of them identifying as pop culture and leisure enthusiasts (according to the Global Web Index); they would readily join a cultural movement that resonates with them.

Despite a growing desire for Gen Zs for diversity, the music they are served is largely mainstream. Brands and record labels have stuck to a largely Hollywood, K-Pop and Manila-centric sound to the detriment of talented artists all around the country. To make things worse, social media algorithms also create “bubbles” that keep feeding the same content that people have consumed - making the discovery of new music movements less possible.

When our competitors went mainstream with big celebrities from K-pop and Hollywood, DITO burst that bubble to truly create an impact. DITO had to go diversely local. DITO seized the opportunity to fulfil young Filipinos’ desire for their talents to be recognized. With the Philippines having 7,641 islands, we wanted to start a movement that champions local talent in the platform that gave rise to the most diverse and underrepresented talents - TikTok.

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 from Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao represented the different cultures and regions of the Philippines and inspired many more people to join in the movement through TikTok.

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 all platforms. DITO became the #2 most-followed telco brand on TikTok.

The campaign’s success also grabbed the attention of our competitors, who subsequently launched similar campaigns to combat Galing DITO. They even launched TikTok-specific campaigns and promos to attempt to replicate the results of our campaign.

DITO improved total brand awareness by 38%. Spontaneous awareness by 73% and increased Brand Desire by 75.8%.

Outside social media, 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.

Compared to the two telco giants in the Philippines, Globe and Smart, DITO lacked the budget, experience and credibility that our competitors had.

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.