People should just keep their critique to their selves. That’s one of the things people often do if they find something that they don’t like. We don’t normally share our issues with sites or how their ideas work in perspective of a viewer or someone who find interest in the same van as you would. But for me, I am just that person who speaks of what should be said and what I think. Being in the hobby for quite sometime, it does gave you wisdom that would better be good to share to people.

Relationship With Zen

Now, this will be a sensitive issue. Well, any post where I mostly write about Zen is always sensitive. The people in Zen are a sensitive bunch, anything that questions their ideas may, or often times can interpreted in a the most negative way possible. Just like when I talk about one of their staff and his ideas about Anime fandom. I am projecting the same treatment will be done in this post. I do remind that I am here as to give advise, not just about Zen’s work, but also to people who would think to take their brand seriously.

Although I don’t tend to say this, but since I am writing this on a team blog, this post does not reflect the ideas and opinions of the other authors of this site (that’s just Anton). I take responsibility on the opinions, comments and suggestion that will arise in the process of this post. Any violent reactions or angry comments are welcome to write on our comment section below. You can always find me in events, mainly Toy Con and Cosplay Mania if you want to punch me in the face. But before you do that, I would need to take-off my glasses as they are expensive. 

Case

The purpose of this post is to talk about the recent decisions made by the good folks at Zen. As we had known, to those who bother to read about TV in Anime, these people tend to have a lot of branding associated with the Zen network. Each key figures have their own personal space and they have mini-features like their annual poll (that didn’t materialized this year) Otaku’s verdict. Recently they featured a new brand under their network called Anime Pilipinas, which begs to question the move to tagalize the very same purpose of their main site Zen as both site contain the very same purpose, albeit just one being in Filipino while the other in English.

Cause

With so many stuff placed under the Zen Brand, this poses a lot of problems for the brand and the admins themselves:

Mismanaged Brands

I remember a talk during a blogging summit last year, spoken by David D’Angelo about putting blogs with multiple personalities. The idea is to have multiple blogs that feature each segments of your interest, or persona as I would call it. While this can work in the favor of the reader who only has one segment of your interest. This poses problems to the admin, who can’t have a decent moment of their time to manage every one of them. D’Angelo and his merry band of bloggers do manage to overcome this dilemma, which composed of many sub-groups that write stuff in respective blogs. The problem with Zen however, is that are there such a team to manage each individual brand, if so in at least weekly basis?

Redundancy

The main reason I wrote this post in the first place. It begs to critique the purpose of having a Filipino site while the English site has the very same purpose all together. Is this part of a road map? That is something that I can not answer. However, looking at it as a visitor of both being a Filipino, may provide me a reason to speculate on the direction that this made. We can look at this as an angle to maximize their target audience. This is also similar to what most Mainstream media outlets do when they feature American films to the masses. The latter has a purpose, given the saddening state of English proficiency of the country. The former is subject to critique, as to what does featuring a site in Filipino contribute to the internet audience? We can assume that a great deal of the Filipino internet users who will bother to read blogs has adequate to sufficient proficiency to understand conversational English. Comparing the articles of Lourd De Veyra over spot.ph and to Zen, not to be taken as an insult, Zen is more simple compared to the Lourd’s style of writing coming form a hardened journalist background. That alone is enough to have the wide reach of internet fanbase, plus it also provide a gateway to Foreigners that happen to stumble upon the site and reading how utterly poor our Anime in the mainstream TV (No different from the US and other western European countries).

So what is the purpose of Anime Pilipinas? It doesn’t target a larger audience, since people who read blogs has sufficient English knowledge; It alienates Foreign visitors by using our local language that will sound like runespeak; it further hampers down on the capacity of the admins to provide content, since they have to think and translate news into Filipino where most of the sources are using English. If it’s an exclusive it further factors down the first two points since it will not reach the maximum intended and extra audience it has.

So is there a point having Anime Pilipinas?

Solution

Prune Brands

Something I learned from working at my company and dealing with different industries. Don’t start big! Ideas are great, it’s part of us that makes us important or see our sense of worth if we think of new things. The problem with thinking big, is that it doesn’t encompasses if the ideas will fit in the real world. There are factors, issues needs to be considered before plunging in to the idea. You should think more if it plays to the current game or refine and improve the idea.

To cite an example: The dere-moe team has existed for 2 years now. It has been the only brand that we carry and has refined it many times in the process. The result is an ever active site with weekly posts from Me or Anton about the current season of anime; talk about stuff related to Philippine Anime conventions or just about anything otaku related. It also pushed to refining the brand by changing the design of the site from the better, as with the launching of the new theme that would transcend to the next anniversary. We have over 1000 posts published on the site and garnered a fair amount of notoriety in the Aniblogosphere and to events. Not that I am showcasing the accomplishments. To be fair, Zen has more influence over the PR machinery and local cosplay community than dere-moe has. But I see them do a lot of stuff in conventions, but little is being broadcasted or shown to the public. Quality control maybe, but if produce more waste than having something useful, it should be wise to check and see what’s wrong.

My suggestion is to check and prioritize the brands they think they have the capacity to run. Zen is pretty much enough be the portal for News and stuff we don’t need another one that does the same thing with just one different flavor. Between a pig and a pig in a dress, they’re both pigs and do the same pig stuff.

Set Schedules

People often complained about not having the time to write stuff. This has been overused by a lot of bloggers/authors out there, it is almost points to an excuse itself. Although every person has their own set of priorities in life, which also includes me. If you do have a care in your brand, at least have a moment to write something in it, have it on your schedule. Too busy for the next week? Write posts a head of time. Too busy because of Exam? Write short insightful post, or write post ahead of time. Thesis? Write post once a week. You are NOT doing your thesis in every wake of your day. It also good to take the mind of the work and have something that you like at least in short moments. It’s okay to slowdown if needed. But it is no excuse to not post in long periods. Anton is writing posts, surprisingly, despite him complaining about how busy his university life. I am also busy with development which can take a week or a month of my time. Jay despite not having his own PC manage to spit post because he writes his post in his notebook and encodes it while on the cafe. He has more shit to say in his blog compared here. Well, those are shit anyway.

Conclusion

To conclude this overly long walls of text, which most viewers will not bother to finish and only one person would see this to the end, my advice can only summarized into something along the lines of “prioritize and consider possibilities”. Check your idea if its doable and has direction or purpose, then make sure you can stick to that idea in a long run.

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