Matt Godfrey Talks Filipino Fast Food
Our very own Matt Godfrey, President of Y&R Asia, recently wrote an article in Singapore Marketing. In the feature he recounts a valuable story of Filipino business owner Edgar Sia II. Godfrey describes how Sia, a fast food restaurant chain owner, has the unique ability to “capture consumer attention in a way that the ‘McMBAs’ and ‘McExperts’ couldn’t.”
Sia recently sold his more than 380 Mang Inasal restaurants to the largest fast food chain in the Philippines, Jollibee, for P3 billion. Sia’s simple concept of “all you can eat rice” has proven to be the lucrative idea behind his success. “Combining a love of fast-food with the Asian love of buffet rice. Genius.” said Godfrey. Jollibee’s main competitor, McDonald’s, despite all it’s efforts from agencies and expensive market research studies, was not able to capture consumer attention because “innovation isn’t just a boardroom conversation, a country conversation- it’s an Asian mission.”
Godfrey further emphasizes that we need to “push beyond being simply creative to being innovative.” It is important to look at what innovators like Edgar Sia II are doing in the Asia region and what impact they are having in the markets. As Godfrey described, we all need “our own ‘all you can eat rice’ moment.”
