To branch out and sustain a solid relationship with communities, both companies and PR professionals alike have to start deep – at the grassroots – and lead a campaign with purpose.
And no matter how well-established any company is, they still have to reconnect with their customers. That involves connecting (and reconnecting) with communities.
In the case of Asiawide Refreshments Corp. (ARC), there was always this need for a refresh – a way to connect ARC with the very communities they wanted to serve.
What It Is About
For 22 years, ARC served the Filipino people as the official bottler of the iconic RC Cola. This sustained presence needed a refresh as their audiences evolved and buying sentiments changed. There was a need to sustain their reputation as a brand that understood their communities by switching the way they spoke to those communities.
A simple online posting campaign wasn’t enough. What ARC needed was a new way of integrated communications. Their best first step: work with a PR and IMC agency that understands integrated communications at its core.
NGP IMC’s strategies have been multifaceted throughout the years. Aside from the PR and media seeding, there was a huge emphasis on:
- reflecting Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
- upholding advocacy, and
- connecting and delivering what people needed
Why It Matters
ARC’s 22 years presence comes with a hundred stories of people whose lives they’ve impacted: school kids buying RC Cola in plastic bags to cool off after a hot day, a young professional dreaming of a better life after logging out of work and opening a bottle of Arcy’s root beer to unwind, a father sharing his childhood favorites (like RC cola) with his child, and so on.
ARC knew that these relatable, uniquely Filipino core memories and stories deserved to be told. Generations deserved to enjoy more uniquely Filipino moments with a “pambansang panulak” to mark the occasion.
The Decade-Long Campaign Execution and Success
ARC’s campaign is actually a series of campaigns.
Campaign Execution
With NGP IMC, here’s how ARC met their benchmarks.
- Reflecting Corporate Social Responsibility (My Gulay Garden)
ARC’s mission is “to be the lowest cost producer of ready-to-drink, non-alcoholic beverages.” (ARC Refreshments Corporation, 2025). It’s a worthwhile mission because everybody deserves a drink. But what happens with the extra bottles after the drinks?
ARC partnered with NGP IMC to tell everyone the answer to that question. Right after the pandemic, ARC started the My Gulay Garden: Grow As One program.
ARC encouraged their consumers to reuse their colorful RC Cola PET bottles as plant pots for the fruits, vegetables, and herbs they wanted to grow, in a bid to shine a spotlight on the benefits of urban gardening and food security.
Of course, this didn’t stop with green initiatives.
With green thumbs came ARC’s donation drives and volunteer efforts with local LGUs/stakeholders. With media and PR help from NGP IMC, their efforts reached various communities across the country–adding more bottle-to-pot creations, volunteers, and positive impact overall.
- Advocacy (ARC Young Leader’s Camp, RC Cola Liga ng Bayan)
ARC Refreshment Corporation established ARC Young Leaders Camp in 2011. Its aim was to provide a leadership training platform for students across the country’s public universities and colleges.
Investing in young leaders, this 3-day event featured topnotch speakers and activities that drew out the students’ skills and natural talent.
With the help of NGP IMC’s community engagement, ARC’s advocacy initiative began to spread across various news outlets and social media platforms.
The program became so successful that the Asia Responsible Entrepreneurship Awards (AREA), an award body that recognizes and honors Asian businesses for championing sustainable and responsible entrepreneurship, granted ARC the “Investment in People” award in 2017.
ARC’s desire to hone leadership skills in the youth also extended to sport initiatives. ARC established the “RC Cola Liga ng Bayan” basketball competitions in an effort to get more remote communities across the South of Luzon engaged in basketball – the country’s favorite pastime.
With sports came sportsmanship, teamwork, and leadership – values the Liga ng Bayan wanted to hone in young 12-to-16-year-old Filipinos across the South of Luzon.
- Connecting and Delivering What People Needed
All these initiatives generated stories that connected with people across various communities all over the country.
Through traditional marketing and online PR, these activities generated not just pickups and PR values, but impact. People who read these stories found their voices by interacting online. NGP developed RC Cola’s content strategy and oversaw execution and reporting.
How Did NGP IMC Play Into This?
- NGP IMC developed ARC’s overall PR Strategy and mapped out the overall messaging map or framework, focusing on key objectives and brand activities;
- We also helped with developing the conceptual framework behind ARC’s advocacy initiatives;
- We devised a strategy for continuous and consistent PR seeding over a specific period, within several beats like lifestyle, business, and news feature sections. These multi–angle stories ensured people could see that ARC’s advocacies and goals spanned all aspects of life.
- Finally, we made sure all executions were integrated and seamless through traditional and digital channels.
Campaign Success
The agency has sustained this massive CSR-advocacy campaign for more than 10 years, with:
- More than 50 press pick-ups
- A total of PHP 6 to 7 million worth of PR values and mileage across various media channels (print, broadcast & online) per year, and
- Consistent press releases on gardening, sustainability, recycling, and PET bottles
The Young Leaders Camp also:
- Brought together almost 250 campers, and
- Generated total of PHP 50 million in PR value
Insights and Takeaways
- Start With An Idea
Do you want more people to recycle your bottles, or do you want to pay forward through helping the youth in your area? Do you want more young leaders, or do you simply want to know more about your audience?
Your idea doesn’t have to be concrete, but it does have to be solid enough to stand for something. And it doesn’t have to be too grand. Having more people play basketball can actually go far as a campaign.
- Know What Your Goal Is
Answer these questions to start: What would you like out of your advocacy and CSR initiatives? How would you define a successful campaign?
- Know Your Core Message
Message mapping, in any campaign, is important because you don’t want isolated islands of news coverage and social media posts that don’t make sense to each other.
- Who Do You Want To Target?
Who do you want to resonate with?
Young adults and students are usually the target audience for advocacy campaigns because they have the pocket change and the time to spend. They also have a lot of passion and energy to give to any advocacy or initiative. But maybe you want to target new moms or retirees with extra time on their hands, too. Work with a PR agency to figure it out with you.
Need To Find Your Center? Work With NGP
Advocacy and CSR campaigns, online and offline, are difficult to pull off. Have an idea you want to bring to life, but can’t seem to execute?
NGP IMC has helped ARC in its direction for years. Big or small, they’re well-equipped to help you map out the campaign of your dreams.
Here’s more of their work outside of ARC. You can also contact them directly, or book an appointment.
Kriztin Cruz is a recruitment and digital marketing professional, freelance writer, hobbyist painter, and frustrated sociologist–with too many things to want and too little time to spare. She graduated with a Psychology degree in 2019 at De La Salle – College of Saint Benilde Antipolo. When she’s not drafting a corporate letter or working on anything digital marketing, you can find her doing the following, but not in this order: reading a good book, scavenging for a good book, sketching, painting, journaling, junk journaling, obsessing over an obscure Czechoslovakian surrealist film (or anything by Miyazaki or Del Toro), cooking, finding a cafe to relax in, and creating new things while a nice documentary plays in the background.