Telum is looking to highlight the diverse and vibrant agencies in the Southeast Asian PR agency landscape in upcoming editions of our PR Alert. We want to encourage networking, business opportunities, and to celebrate the great initiatives being worked on around the region. If you'd like your agency to feature, get in touch.​​​​

What services does Evident offer?
Evident is an integrated marketing and public relations firm based in the Philippines. We are a team of communication professionals who believe that every aspect of work must be done with purpose at its core. Evident services clients across five practice areas: corporate and public affairs, lifestyle and consumer PR, advocacy communications, digital marketing, and esports and sports marketing. As an integrated firm, we are able to provide a wide range of services to help clients design and implement effective communications campaigns and programmes.

What size is the agency?
We are a team of 40 professionals who aim to spark positive change and produce real-world results. From PR specialists, digital marketing experts, behaviour change communicators to sports marketers, our team has diverse skill sets and a wide range of expertise that enables us to create impactful campaigns for brands, corporations, government agencies, sports teams, and NGOs.

Where does Evident have an office?
We are based at the heart of Manila’s CBD, Makati City. The team currently operates on a remote work setup due to the pandemic. Situation permitting, the team also travels to lead projects and support clients within and outside the Philippines.

Do you have a particular area of focus?
As an integrated marketing and public relations firm, we have had the benefit of working with many different clients that range from startups to large global brands in our practice areas of PR and digital marketing. In terms of sector focus, our advocacy communications team specialises in working with NGOs and public sector clients, while our esports and sports marketing team works with game developers, sports teams and esports leagues.

Who is the founder and why did they start the agency?
Cecile Dominguez-Yujuico spent the first half of her career in the NGO sector before becoming an entrepreneur and founding Evident. She started Evident with no prior agency experience, but with a vision of providing much-needed communications services to the underserved nonprofit sector. Over the past eight years, Cecile has successfully grown and diversified the agency to become the award-winning integrated marketing and public relations firm that it is today. She believes that some key factors of Evident’s success are in the diversity of the team’s backgrounds and expertise, and its sharply honed focus on strategy, that enable the agency to give its clients fresh perspectives and approaches to campaigns and programmes.

Tell us about the leadership team.
Alongside our CEO and Founder Cecile Dominguez Yujuico, is our Chief Operating Officer, Stephanie Balois-Guerrero. She brings with her expertise in brand strategy, consumer insights, brand and product development as well as sales and operations, with her over 17 years of experience working on major consumer brands.

Stephanie is responsible for scaling our agency in close partnership with Cecile. Contributing her vast client-side experience across different industries, Stephanie aims to help build Evident’s leadership in purpose marketing. She will also continue to strengthen the firm’s competitive advantage in the Philippines and regionally in Southeast Asia by growing its esports practice through digital marketing and PR.

Stephanie is also an adjunct digital marketing professor at the Asian Institute of Management and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.

What is next for Evident? What is the five year goal?
Given today’s uncertainties, it’s difficult to plan five years into the future. When the pandemic hit, our team seamlessly transitioned to a full-remote setup and we were able to successfully support our clients and continue to win new business.

As a company, we draw our strength from our strong company culture of teamwork, collaboration, and productive fun. Looking to the future, we are committed to continuing to deepen our expertise in our practice areas and try to stay one step ahead of the curve across the communications practice.

We’re very optimistic about our practice areas of corporate and public affairs, advocacy communications and digital marketing. We’re also excited about our newest practice area of esports and sports marketing where we see a lot of energy and excitement in the sector.

In a sentence, describe your ideal relationship with a journalist.
For us, the ideal relationship with the media is one that is based on deep collaboration. We work with kindred spirits who share purposeful stories. In several landmark campaigns for our development sector clients, we worked with journalists in pursuit of both stories and programmatic solutions. Evident goes beyond seeding and pitching stories. We work with the media to achieve things that are bigger than the expectations of our professional designation. 

Tell us about a campaign you are currently working on or are particularly proud of.
We launched the “Safe At Home With E-Payments Campaign” for the Central Bank of the Philippines. This campaign was recognised by the 2020 Gold Stevie Award for PR Campaign of the Year - COVID-19 Related Information as well as the Philippine Quill - Award of Merit, 18^th IABC Philippine Quill Award.

For this campaign, we developed content for the Central Bank’s financial literacy platform, Pisolit; regular press engagements were done with the BSP’s Center for Learning and Inclusion Advocacy (CLIA) unit, and stakeholder meetings were conducted with bank partners to ensure that they amplify the messages.

Any key PR trends your agency is keeping an eye on?

• Integrated Channel Strategy: As brands and organisations continue to shift to digital, we are closely monitoring the evolution of existing online channels such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube as well as the introduction of newer platforms such as Clubhouse and Polywork.
• Traditional Media: Online news sites and broadcast channels have become the most preferred sources of news in the Philippines, we are looking forward to seeing how print releases on daily newspapers remain relevant in different markets.
• KOLs: The campaign effectiveness and relevance of micro-influencers vs. mega and mid-tier influencers.

What skill sets do you look for in new hires?
We believe in a “productive fun” culture, where the members of our team can thrive in a fulfilling, high performing environment. We value inclusivity and collaboration so when hiring new colleagues, we look at how they complement the strengths of the team. The technical skill sets depending on the roles we hire for but we constantly look for communication professionals who are capable of thinking outside of the box and know how to have fun, productively.