Evolve for the Customer: Timeless Marketing with Joaquin “Jonjon” San Agustin

Digital marketing changes quickly. Platforms evolve, consumer behavior shifts, and new technology constantly changes how brands create, distribute, and measure their work. But for Jonjon San Agustin, Head of Marketing for SM Supermalls, the principles underneath effective marketing have changed far less.

In a conversation with Digital Primer host Ibarra Villaseran, Jonjon traced a career that began in FMCG, moved through telecommunications, and eventually brought him into retail. Across those industries, one principle remained consistent: understand the customer first, then build everything else around that understanding. 

It is a useful perspective at a time when marketers can easily become preoccupied with platforms, formats, automation, and whatever happens to be generating attention today.

Start With the Fundamentals

Jonjon compares marketing to tennis, a sport he has played for more than five decades. His coach taught him early that strong fundamentals make it easier to recover, adapt, and perform consistently. He sees marketing in much the same way.

Growing up professionally before the internet meant doing research manually, observing customers in stores, testing products carefully, and understanding why people made particular choices. More importantly, it reinforced the idea that marketers need to know their consumers thoroughly.  

Technology has changed the mechanics. The underlying responsibility has not.

For experienced marketing leaders, this distinction matters. New tools can make execution faster, but speed does not compensate for weak positioning, unclear customer understanding, or an inconsistent proposition.

Evolve for the Customer, Not Simply With Them

One of Jonjon’s more useful distinctions is between evolving *with* the customer and evolving *for* the customer.

When SM Supermalls began building its digital marketing program, the marketing organization moved away from organizing primarily around categories such as dining, fashion, or services. Instead, teams were organized around audience segments, including families and younger consumers. Content from across the mall network could then be selected and shaped according to what each audience was more likely to value. 

According to Jonjon, that more audience-focused approach produced engagement well above the benchmarks they were seeing at the time. 

The lesson is broader than social media segmentation. Customer centricity should affect how marketing teams are structured, how content is selected, and even how products and experiences are designed.

Listening to the customer is necessary. Anticipating what will make the brand more useful or relevant is the next step.

Build Distribution and Measurement Into the Strategy

Good content alone was not enough.

Jonjon recalled advice from a mentor: even the best brand and the best content still need a sales force capable of bringing them to the market. SM Supermalls applied that principle digitally by building a distribution network across mall social accounts, customer communication channels, media relationships, key opinion leaders, and online communities. Paid media then complemented that existing network. 

Measurement received the same attention.

Rather than relying only on reach and engagement, the team wanted to understand broader indicators such as affinity and advocacy. That eventually led to the development of its own research methodology, later referred to as Spark. 

It reflects a disciplined view of digital marketing: decide what the business needs to accomplish, build the means to distribute the message effectively, and establish a way to determine whether the strategy is actually working.

Virality Is an Outcome, Not the Strategy

The Gala to the Max campaign demonstrates how those principles can work together.

The campaign was tested with a Gen Z council, adjusted based on feedback, and supported by SM Supermalls’ extensive distribution network. Jonjon said the campaign generated close to 150 million views over roughly two and a half months, including hundreds of dance challenge videos produced through the mall network. 

But his emphasis was not on virality itself.

He cautioned against allowing marketers to become distracted by the immediate success of something that happens to take off online. The stronger foundation remains consumer insight: identifying the gap, deciding what the product needs to deliver, communicating that proposition clearly, and doing it consistently. 

That also requires patience. Marketing does not always produce its most meaningful results in a week or a month. Strong brands often repeat the same core proposition for years while continuously refreshing how that proposition is expressed. 

The Takeaway

Marketing will continue to change because customers will continue to change. Platforms, tools, formats, and expectations will move with them.

The more durable advantage is knowing what should not change: a clear understanding of the customer, a relevant proposition, disciplined distribution, meaningful measurement, and consistent execution.

The tools will keep evolving. The fundamentals still decide whether the work holds together.