A MULTICULTURAL advertising agency in Toronto owned by two Filipino women recently won the top award for print in the annual Summit International Awards, highlighting the two immigrants’ incredible journey from packing bagels in a factory to handling multi-million dollar marketing campaigns for major companies.
AV Communications, owned and managed by Filipino partners Anna Maramba and Marvi Yap, has been honored the title of “2012 Best of Show, Print” presented by one of the top award-giving bodies in the advertising industry.
“We are so honored and thrilled by the news,” Maramba, AV Communications’ co-founder and media director said.
Yap, Maramba’s business partner and president of the firm, added, “The win strengthens our belief that, with the drive for excellence backed by exceptional talents, small agencies can deliver outstanding work and big results.”
Among the thousands of submissions from 22 countries in this year’s Summit Creative Awards competition, AV Communications was chosen as the “Gold” winner in the consumer magazine category for their creative work for BMW’s “Year of the Dragon – Chinese New Year Greeting,” and was crowned the title of “Best of Show” among other Gold winners. This year’s panel of judges included an array of high profile industry professionals from all over the world, including Asia, Europe and North America.
The BMW print ad, done in cooperation with BMW’s agency of record, Cundari, also won the silver medal in the Second Multicultural Marketing Awards, the most prestigious in Canada.
AV Communications is a full-service multicultural advertising agency that counts among its high profile clients in Canada — BMW, Western Union, Kia, Scotiabank, Sun Life Financial, Cineplex Entertainment, Disney on Ice, Money Mart and the province of Ontario.
It had been a tough, but wonderful journey for Maramba and Yap, who after immigrating to Canada a little more than 12 years ago had to make both ends meet with various odd jobs, from packing bagels in a Toronto factory to delivering Toronto newspapers in the middle of the night.
Both Maramba and Yap had good-paying jobs in Manila. Maramba was an interior designer while Yap managed her own small ad agency. But their adventurous spirit brought them to Toronto where they did not have family and friends for support.
“I felt that there was something out here for me. In spite of everything that would happen, I had that spirit in me that I would survive,” she told writer www.canadianimmigrant.ca.
Yap was the first to try her luck in Canada in 2000. Staying in a stranger’s living room with her two suitcases, she tried applying for a position in Canada’s many ad agencies, but despite her 15 years of experience and qualification, nobody would hire her. She did odd jobs, such as ushering for a theater and working in mailrooms, to make ends meet until finally, a small ad agency hired her as account manager.
She worked her way to becoming one of the agency’s top account managers, but despite her outstanding performance, she was among the first to be laid off when the agency lost a huge account.
At about this time, Maramba, a close friend from Manila, had followed her in Toronto. One day in 2002, while they were in a subway car, Yap noticed an ad inside the coach.
“Did you understand that one?” she asked Maramba, who promptly said no.
In their frequent walks around Toronto, they had noticed that many of the print ads and billboards did not reflect the ethnic diversity that made up the people around them.
It dawned on the two that there was room for an advertising agency that would reach out to minority advertisers in a way that immigrants could understand and appreciate, one that would reflect the culture and language of the various minority groups in Canada.
“We recognized that the advertising here is so mainstream, but the population is so diverse,” agrees Yap. “We figured that there might be something there… and we were right.”
They formed AV Communications in 2003 with very little capital, mostly lent by family and friends back home in the Philippines. Still, they had to work at night, packing bagels from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., while struggling to keep their dreams alive and working in their office-bedroom during the day.
With few contacts in their adoptive country, Maramba and Yap got by making business cards for small businesses and managed to get a job decorating the lobby of a bank branch. The break came in 2005 when they met an executive of Western Union’s Canada headquarters, who told them the money remittance company was looking to reach out to ethnic communities.
The two produced a brochure in Tagalog and graphics in Filipino “komiks” style. The campaign was adopted by Western Union in the United States and helped boost the Philippines from Western Union Canada’s No. 23 destination country to No. 12 in just three months. With the help of AV Communications’ direct marketing campaign, the Philippines has been Western Union Canada’s No. 1 destination country for six years now.
Soon word of their success in the Western Union account spread in the marketing community, and clients came one after another. Today, Maramba and Yap run AV Communications from their plush offices in downtown Toronto, with offices in Vancouver, Calgary and Winnipeg.
Yap says what sets them apart from other ethnic ad agencies is their flexibility and ability to market to all ethnic groups, such as the Filipinos, Chinese, Cambodians, Indians, Caribbean, Africans, Latinos and Europeans. What makes this possible is the hard work and dedication of their employees — all immigrants from Colombia, Nigeria, Hong Kong, Greece, Mexico, Mainland China, Philippines, Taiwan, Venezuela and India — that enable them to reach out to ethnic communities in Canada.
These employees are all newcomers to Canada, but skilled immigrants from different countries that they felt deserved the chance to work in their field of expertise, an opportunity Yap had difficulty getting when she was new in Canada.
Nearly seven years after packing their last bagel, Maramba and Yap are happy they can now enjoy the life they dreamed of in going to Canada.
“Life is rosy,” says Yap. “It’s great to look back and see how far we have come. We have a business that is thriving, our agency is growing fast, and we even have some clients who are waiting for us to expand into the United States.”
