The ‘Ber Bran’ story
It’s a story that has gone “viral” over Facebook and other Internet sites. It starts with Oj Trance Atilano who, deciding to raise money for the survivors of Supertyphoon “Yolanda,” began going around his neighborhood offering “hugs” in exchange for donations for them.
Then Oj meets a neighbor, Carmen, a widow who works as a laundry woman and who repacks coal on the side. She apologized that, due to her poverty, she could give nothing to the survivors. But, she said, she had this half-full pack of powdered milk. She explained that while it was all she could give because “times are hard,” the typhoon survivors, especially the children, could benefit from drinking the milk. “You can still mix this and give them milk,” she told Oj in Bisaya. “They will like this because it’s Ber Bran (Bear Brand powder milk).”
In his post, Oj writes that he was stunned into silence for a while. “My tears flowed in front of her. I took the pack of milk, and left for my home. I couldn’t hold back my tears. My chest felt like it was about to burst.”
From an initial three “likes” on his Facebook post, the story gained such a following that it soon garnered 35,000 “likes,” a total that must be even higher now.
It’s understandable why the folks at Nestlé Philippines, manufacturers of Bear Brand, among other products, are so enamored of this story.
Sandra Castro Puno, Nestlé vice president for communications, says she had the local sales force look for Oj and ask him to introduce them to Carmen. They ended up taking him and Carmen out to lunch.
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“This is what we mean by ‘creating shared value,’” says John Martin Miller, chair and CEO of Nestlé Philippines. “It’s been our corporate philosophy that if the company is to flourish, the country and society have to progress, too.”
Having been in the country for more than a hundred years, Nestlé has become one of the most trusted consumer brands not just in the Philippines but in the world. In a recent local survey, according to the Nestlé executives, the best known (and best selling) consumer
product brand was Nescafé, followed by Bear Brand, Milo and, finding itself in the “Top 20,” Maggi.
“The Philippines is a big market (for Nestlé),” avers Patrice Bula, executive vice president and head of Strategic Business Units for Nestlé worldwide, whose visit here occasioned the lunch meet-and-greet with the local media. “We believe in involving society at large in what we do, and in the wake of this recent typhoon, we told our people that the company would match whatever donations they managed to raise for the victims.”
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There is no rest for the marketing man, apparently. Miller says, without a trace of embarrassment, that whenever he is invited for dinner, “I do a pantry check, and almost always I find Nestlé products on the shelves.”
At the moment, Nestlé is striking out in new, pioneering fields. First, says Bula, is the emphasis on healthy eating, hewing to the company’s mantra of “nutrition, health and wellness.” Addressing the twin (and ironic) problems of under- and over-nutrition, Nestlé is developing healthier, lighter and fortified formulations for its products.
Second, says Miller, is the company’s venture into digital marketing, the most exciting, at least to Nestlé executives and their young(er) customers, being the linkup between the confectionery Kit-Kat and the Google android. Apparently, the folks at Google named their new phone after Kit-Kat, while the makers of Kit-Kat have produced packaging that makes the chocolate wafer bar look like an android phone.
For the senior media folks at the lunch, all this talk of “androids” and “platforms” skim over our heads. What doesn’t change is the feeling of familiarity with Nestlé and the childhood memories this evokes.
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Consider his career as a comic/impersonator “collateral damage” in the aftermath of Yolanda.
After staging a fundraiser for Class 1991 of the University of the Philippines College of Medicine to benefit juvenile heart patients of the Philippine General Hospital, Willie Nepomuceno left for Australia to perform at the Tivoli Showroom of the Royal Hill RSL in Western Sydney. The 800-seat theater was filled with Filipino compatriots as well as by Australians, with repeat performances on the drawing board.
But when Willy Nep got home, he faced a number of show cancellations. The shows had been scheduled for the Christmas season but in the wake of the devastation of Yolanda, people were in no mood to celebrate.
While tuned in to a newscast, Willy Nep learned that UP Tacloban was devastated by the storm, along with UP in Palo, Leyte. He called a long-time friend for a talk over coffee, and they were soon joined by another friend, and another, and all of them agreed that UP alumni should get together to do something for the students, faculty and their families displaced by Yolanda, as well as to rebuild the ruined campuses.
Soon, the UP Alumni Association agreed to sponsor their efforts, calling on students, graduates and friends to fill up the Music Museum, not with relief goods but with warm bodies, getting together not just to raise funds but also to have fun and forget, even if only for a while, their troubles and grief.
Thus, “Comic Relief: Willie Nep to the Rescue” will go onstage at the Music Museum at
8 p.m. on Dec. 14, filling the evening with Willie Nep’s brand of entertainment—a mix of nostalgic music and memories and political satire. Frida Nep will portray the “Pork Barrel Queen,” and her father, all the other political figures that now occupy our headlines.
Tickets are available at the UPAA, Bahay Alumni, UP Diliman (0917-8377098/920-6868). Indeed, “it’s more fund in the Philippines!”
