InqPOP! and BrandRoom: There’s a spark in every story

 

MANILA, Philippines – At work, people generally feel a sense of apprehension when they encounter anything that has something to do with selling. Nobody wants to be engaged in the dire and desperate task of wooing clients to generate revenue for the company. And yet, everyone in the company wants to benefit from the revenue, naturally. The people tasked to earn the big bucks for everybody, therefore, are either dealt with by the company with calculated tolerance or absolute cooperation. And this dynamic takes on varying degrees of highs and lows, particularly in the field of online journalism. The balance for the digital publication to keep delivering breaking and brave reportage while being a fertile ground for viral commercial exposure must be protected and nurtured.

In the case of INQUIRER.net’s BrandRoom and InqPOP!, the duty to sell and earn has been excellently carried out by these teams out of their keen understanding of what INQUIRER.net is really all about – serving the readers. BrandRoom, the native advertising solutions division of INQUIRER.net, pioneered in the skillful crafting and effective delivery of truthful client features and campaigns. These multimedia campaigns all reach target audiences, engage them, and elicit from them responses that reflect reader confidence and satisfaction with the subject brands. BrandRoom does not only exercise the virtue of integral storytelling, a quality in line with the ideals of INQUIRER.net, it also lends to its brand partners its audience sensibility. What BrandRoom creates for its clients are content that go beyond eyeing readers as markets, as consumers – BrandRoom’s campaigns are useful stories from where readers derive value as homemakers, entrepreneurs, travelers, communicators and workers. Accordingly, BrandRoom’s brand of native advertising has been the platform of huge partners that include BDO, Ayala Land, Globe Telecom, Hong Kong Tourism Board, Unilever, Fonterra, Japan National Tourism Organization, Megaworld, Nestle, Smart, SM, among others. And the partnerships continue to grow.

While BrandRoom may be the clients’ go-to place for campaigns that require in-depth and multi-layered approaches, partners who seek a more mass appeal reach has InqPOP! as its playground. What started out as a simple campaign-enabling channel within INQUIRER.net, containing straight ads and marketing materials in its earlier days, has transformed into a progressive pop culture website sought by readers for its wackiness and wit, its smarts and its savvy, all imbibed in their fun featurettes, cartoons, memes and videos. Readers need a reprieve after all from the weary hard news. Brands and businesses that wish to reach audiences at their most unguarded and relaxed state, therefore, carry their campaigns via InqPOP!. And as the channel upholds experimentation and innovation, it naturally attracts the millennial set, a growing segment of INQUIRER.net’s readership. InqPOP!, while it wisely pokes fun at the now, is perfectly atuned to the future. Any partner who wishes to partake of a vision of that future has InqPOP! to hang out and make the deal with.

And at the end of the day, when all the deals have been made (or while some remain in progress), after all the stories have been published and all the readers have read, the pressure of earning the buck laid on the shoulders of a few fades. After all, it only becomes hard to sell something that one does not believe in, and it’s easy to believe in something when you know and appreciate the real story. The people behind BrandRoom and InqPOP!, armed with insight, constantly inspired, always see the stories worth telling, and they see it in everything.

Click here to know more about BrandRoom’s work.

Click here to read pop culture content from InqPOP!.