For 17 years, Vitalstrats Creative Solutions (VCS) has taken pride in being a small but capable fish in a very large pond. Swimming alongside larger regional marketing agencies and big brands, VCS has kept its own pace. The locally-grown medium-sized marketing agency boasts of a team with excellent creative backgrounds and skills, and is committed to providing clients and partners with well-researched and planned strategic creativity in order to fulfill clients’ business and communications objectives.

Chief Creative Officer (CCO) Amrei Dizon admits that joining prestigious marketing competitions has not been high on the team’s priority list. “It’s not part of our core marketing strategy. We don’t really allot a yearly budget for this,” she says.

In 2012, VCS entered a nationwide marketing and design competition but failed to make the cut. The experience was an eye-opener as VCS found itself competing with big name brands and global agencies with large budgets that could support the submission of multiple entries. It was also a lesson on how brands and agencies leveraged prestigious awards as a measure of their credibility and authority in the industry.

VCS took the loss in stride. The team understood that going against larger agencies with higher budgets will always be a challenge. Instead, VCS decided to focus on building its credibility and authority through strong client-agency collaboration, exceptional output, and word-of-mouth.

This does not mean that the team shuns the idea of awards. VCS has been active behind-the-scenes as organizers for several local marketing industry award-giving bodies. CCO Amrei Dizon has been a guest judge and screener for the Araw Values Awards, Quill Awards, PANATA Awards, and Agora Awards, among others. While VCS has not entered awards competitions, it is clear that the team’s credibility, status, and quality of work has not gone unrecognized by the industry.

This 2021, however, VCS took a shot at submitting two entries to the PANATA Awards: Ang Inyong BDO sa Bayan with BDO Network Bank, and Real World, Real Talk Series: Your Guide to Adulting with Sun Life Philippines.

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Finance and HR Director Teejai Joson credits the decision to join the PANATA Awards to VCS’ strong client-agency relationship. “Yung clients natin, BDO Network Bank and Sun Life, sila mismo ang nag-push na sumali ang VCS sa awards competition. This means naniniwala sila sa kakayahan natin, at alam nila na may laban ang work natin.”

“We knew those campaigns were strong because the results have been impressive,” says Dizon. “May laban talaga. We knew we had a chance of winning, pero marami ring ibang magagaling kasi competitive ang entries. We didn’t know what to expect.”

The Ang Inyong BDO sa Bayan campaign won Bronze in the People’s Choice Excellence in Brand Positioning category, while the Real World, Real Talk Series: Your Guide to Adulting campaign secured PANATA together with Meta’s Connecting for Good special award.

“Though we didn’t win in the categories we joined and won special awards instead, napakalaking karangalan na,” Joson says. “Na-validate na may value talaga tayong nabibigay sa clients, and nare-recognize nila ang galing ng team.”

“We felt proud and honored,” says Dizon. “The mere fact that we were recognized and shortlisted by PANATA, and our agency name stands alongside known regional agencies and big brands—it’s already a win for us. VCS is seen and visible in the industry.”

“We have years of experience, we have good processes and systems, we have a good team, a good culture, and we know how to best treat clients and anticipate their needs,” says Dizon. “These are what helped us thrive for the past 17 years.”

Dizon believes that VCS’ strength is what the team has consistently been striving to provide to clients through the years: Strategic Creativity. “It’s important that we understand the client’s Key Performance Indicators and business objectives. We then come up with the right strategies and creative problem solving that would drive our campaigns to meet the client’s objectives.”

In this respect, collaboration and communication between the client and the agency is of utmost importance. “Kailangan laging aligned. Clients are our allies, they become part of the team for the projects,” Dizon says. VCS respects the inputs and guidance that clients provide, which in turn helps the team see things from the client’s perspective, since they are most immersed with their own market segments.

Joson adds that the clients’ hard-earned trust in VCS not only helped make the campaigns successful, it also pushes the team to strive higher. “When the clients encouraged us to join the awards competitions, na-build yung confidence natin. It made us believe that we can win—and we did! We’re celebrating this win now, but I know this is just the start of greater things to come—not just in terms of awards, but of what the company can do in pursuit of growth.”

Dizon shares this bright view of VCS’ future. “We are honored by our clients’ continuous trust in the team. They have been instrumental to our growth. I’m looking forward to more collaborations, and to the VCS team producing more strategically creative content—the type of content that has a positive impact on different communities.”

VCS CELEBRATES FIRST TWO WINS AT THE 2021 PANATA AWARDS