TXTBKS Grand Prix campaign reflects Philippines' "texting capital" status

Developed by DDB DM9JaymeSyfu and telco company Smart Communications, the campaign aimed to ease the backpack burden of young students by converting textbook content into SMS-sized chunks, loading those SMS-based textbooks onto SIM cards and delivering the SIM cards to students.

Aste Gutierrez, the agency's associate creative director, told Campaign Asia-Pacific that the campaign truly reflected the Filipino culture, as the country has been called the “texting capital of the world” for the past 20 years.

“I guess you can say that it's fitting that it's what earns us our first Grand Prix,” he added. “It also demonstrates how Filipinos are innate problem solvers.”

He went on to say that Grand Prix has affirmed the agency’s vision and mission to “go beyond taking the brief and doing ads, and instead create innovative solutions to problems”.

“And, it also inspired us to dream even bigger,” he added.

Gutierrez noted that the agency was looking for the best possible way to make textbooks light and easy.

“We were struggling with how to provide tablets to e-readers—which were now the norm in developed countries—to every child when all they could afford were old analog phones. Until we realised that was exactly the key to the solution.”

In the Philippines, the cheapest model of tablet or e-reader costs more than what a family makes an entire month. The only gadgets most of them own are one to two old analog mobile phones.