Entrepreneur.com.ph

Russ Alfonso, managing director of RS Concepts, is the kind of advertising man who wouldn’t hesitate to get a message across by wrapping whole passenger buses and huge sections of commercial buildings with highly graphic advertising images. Indeed, his company, RS Concepts Inc., is in the business of designing, manufacturing, and installing those light-boxes and dazzling visual displays that are now so common in shopping malls and other high-traffic urban areas.

After this successful foray into outdoor graphic advertising, Alfonso now has taken another entrepreneurial leap, this time into the digital advertising world. With some business partners, he has put up “Wigo,” the first-ever free but advertiser-supported WiFi (Wireless Fidelity) service in the Philippines. The service offers companies a highly focused advertising medium for reaching upward mobile and affluent urban markets.

Digital marketing is the new frontier for sellers and advertisers here in the Philippines, and Alfonso says that there is now a race to develop even more business models to tap into this potentially lucrative business. “There are lots of WiFi hotspots all over the world providing free Internet access but they don’t know how to monetize it. The hotspots are free, but there’s no revenue,” he explains.

That is changing now as Wigo’s coverage spreads into shopping malls, coffee shops, high-traffic office buildings in Makati and Ortigas, university campuses, even municipal and barangay halls. The Wigo service is accessible through laptops, mobile phones, personal digital assistants, and portable gaming devices with WiFi capability.

Says Alfonso: “To expand the reach of our network, we will also introduce iKiosks or Internet access kiosks. These are high-speed custom-branded kiosks that allow users free Internet access—a service made possible by the showing of ads of sponsoring companies.”

To avail of the free Internet service, users will need to download the Wigo toolbar, which will carry clickable ads of the companies that pay for them monthly. The toolbar is persistent or sticky; this means that it stays on and remains visible even if the Internet user moves from one website to another, thus ensuring continuing exposure for the advertiser.

“We are the first to provide advertising support to WiFi in the region,” says Alfonso. “In fact, we have received inquiries from people in Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia who want to license Wigo in their respective countries.”

Alfonso categorizes advertising media into two—traditional and nontraditional. The traditional media include radio, television, and print (newspapers and magazines), while the nontraditional are mostly out-of-home media that target their audiences when they are out of the house.

RS Concepts prides itself as the Philippines’s largest nontraditional advertising media provider, and its move towards digital marketing is a natural course for a company that counts among its clients such big companies as Abbot Laboratories, Bank of the Philippine ISLAND, Citibank, Coca-Cola Bottlers, Globe Telecoms, and Smart Communications.

Alfonso says that Wigo’s entry into digital marketing has a firm basis. He cites the following facts and figures that he says marketers cannot ignore: “There are over 40 million mobile phone users in the country. Filipinos send 250 million text messages daily. Internet usage is expected to grow 23 percent annually to reach 21.5 million by [the end] of 2008. Filipino Internet users on average spend 2.3 hours per day checking e-mail, 1.6 hours on online community activities, 2.7 hours on instant messaging, and 3 hours on other Internet activities. Forty-eight percent of Internet users are within 20 to 28 years old and 44 percent are 30-40 years old.”

But how to make money off these numbers at first perplexed Alfonso. In fact, the big break came only when a group of information technology experts from Asiagate, an Internet technology solutions provider, was able to develop a software and system to deliver advertisements. That group led by Lisa de los Reyes, a software programmer, who came to see him in late 2006 and asked if it was possible to “monetize” the idea.

Alfonso told her that it was a great idea and on December 6, 2006 they formed Wigo Corporation, with De los Reyes becoming the chief operating officer. On 12 January 2008, they formally launched Wigo at the Powerplant Mall in Rockwell, Makati. “We did it because the arena is going towards digital marketing. The future is in digital marketing,” says Alfonso, who became Wigo’s marketing director.

De los Reyes says offering free WiFi is now a viable proposition because of the convergence of several factors. She explains: “The cost of Internet bandwidth has gone down dramatically over the last five years. The cost of laptops and PDAs [personal digital assistant devices] has also gone down. That’s a major factor because now you can buy one laptop for P20,000 to P30,000. In fact, the cost of laptops has really, really gone down worldwide.”

To this Alfonso adds: “This generation we have now is more Internet savvy than the previous one. These are kids who have grown with the Internet, who now routinely log on to Friendster, MySpace, Multiply, Facebook, and YouTube. Obviously, their kids will be even more tech savvy, so as time goes by our market will actually be growing.”

Launched in January this year, the Wigo service is now available at the following establishments in Metro Manila: the Rockwell Power Plant Mall in Makati City, the LKG Food Court on Ayala Avenue also in Makati City, the Ateneo de Manila University campus in Quezon City, the University of the Philippines campus in Diliman, the National Library at Rizal Park in Manila, and the Eastwood City Mall in Libis, Quezon City. Among the first advertisers in Wigo are companies providing financial services, information technology services, call centers, and consumer products.

CONTACT DETAILS

RS CONCEPTS INC.
Russ Alfonso, Managing Director
Unit 1806B, East Tower
Philippine Stock Exchange Center, Pasig City
Telephones: (02) 637-7845;
(02) 637-0059
Fax: (02) 637-8059
E-mail: russalfonso@rsconceptsinc.com
Website: www.non-trad.com

WIGO CORP.
Lisa A. de los Reyes,
Chief Operating Officer
Ground Floor, RCI Building,
105 Rada Street
Legazpi Village, Makati City
Telephones: (02) 752-4969;
(02) 752-4971 to 72
Fax: (02) 867-3473
E-mail: lar@wigo.ph
Website: www.wigo.ph