Written by Angela Loui M. Delos Santos

The final round of the “Best Idea Wins” marketing pitch competition, a central feature of BrandCon PH, took place on September 19, 2025, at Marquis Place Events in Bonifacio Global City, Taguig. Among the distinguished participants were three BA Organizational Communication (OrCom) students—CJ Reyes, Brian Joshua Salvacion, and Matt Daniel Andrew Lisan—who formed “team clutch!” to represent the University of the Philippines Manila. Their achievement as 1st Runner-Up with their proposal, “Cancel Checker,” reflects the significance of the competition as a platform for emerging talents to engage with contemporary challenges and advance their professional development within the marketing discipline.

BrandCon PH, presented by The Business Manual, is a premier branding and marketing conference that brings industry leaders, agency professionals, and emerging talents together for keynote speeches, discussions, campaign awards, and a student competition. This year’s competition is the key segment of the conference that challenges the student finalists to present a two-minute pitch answering: “How can you integrate AI into an effective marketing campaign?”—a question every modern marketer should consider.

Preparations and the Qualifying Round

The three, team clutch!, was formed in a rush; CJ discovered the competition on LinkedIn and tapped the Organizational Communication Society (OrComSoc) president Ricci Dantes for teammates. With only three days left before submission, CJ got acquainted with Matt and Brian and soon pulled together under a fitting team name. “Given that we only had three days left before the deadline, we had to form the team quickly and work fast to pull things together—literally clutching our initial output,” CJ recalled.

Roles were clearly divided within the team: CJ led the team and coordinated their overall pitch, Brian handled market research that grounded their concept in real-world insights, and Matt focused on the big idea, hook, and value proposition which are the “core marketing concept” of their pitch. Their complementary strengths helped the team move quickly from concept to submission for the Qualifying Round.

Pushing through their limits, the team felt validated when the Top 10 Finalists email finally arrived. Those late nights felt “incredibly rewarding” and the exhilaration doubled when one of the judges commended their work, saying, “I liked your team’s video—it was entertaining, informative, and encouraging.”

The campaign idea: “Cancel Checker” and the challenge of 2 minutes

At the heart of all the hard work of team clutch! was the AI marketing campaign “Cancel Checker.” This concept evolved from Matt’s initial idea nicknamed “Kilbot,” which the team refined into a responsible, preventive AI solution that flags cultural insensitivities, factual inaccuracies, and potential triggers. It is a solution which allows brands to be boldly creative, while reducing the risk of their reputational damage. In essence, team clutch! believes that Cancel Checker permits the coexistence of cultural sensitivity and creativity by providing quick, data-informed checks before a brand’s campaign launch.

With the competition’s stringent two-minute pitch mechanics, team clutch! was compelled to condense their entire strategy, research, and concept impact into a concise yet riveting narrative. Matt admitted, “The time limit was brutal,” as what may seem like two minutes on stage required a tremendous effort and numerous days of refinement and rehearsal behind the scenes. As the pressure stacked up, joining the Top 10 finalists from the pool of 43 college teams brought added pressure, as they balanced their schedules between classes, internships, and other commitments. 

From the Department of Arts and Communication (DAC), Prof. Katrina “Kate” Delos Reyes played a decisive role in sharpening Cancel Checker as the team’s faculty coach. She introduced the AI Fluency Framework to the team, which became their conceptual backbone and offered tactical edits—integrating the concepts of “Scan,” “Score,” and “Solve” to better match the product’s function. 

The team aced the competition by reaching out and drawing strength from their supportive circle of mentors and peers. CJ credited the following people for their support throughout the competition:

Huge thanks to Prof. Kate for being so hands-on in helping us find clarity in our concept.

To Athena and Lorna, my friends from UPD, for helping us jumpstart our pitch deck.

To Thy, 3rd year OrCom student for helping us find JC, his batchmate, who then polished the overall design of our pitch deck. 

And of course, to [DAC professor] Sir Barry [Barrientos], who constantly validated our insights.

The team’s experience highlighted a cognizant realization that resonated deeply—that building strong ideas is rarely a solo act. 

Finals: The presentation day and what’s next for team clutch!

On the day of the Finals, only one member of the team was required to present on stage. The team chose CJ to present on stage, while Brian and Matt supported him from the audience. CJ described his two-minute pitch as “the most important two minutes of my life,” finally breathing a sigh of relief once his pitch was over.

Meanwhile, reflecting on the judges’ notes and reactions, Brian appreciated how real-world evaluation shaped their understanding of effective pitching. As for Matt, he felt that the presence of being there alone felt empowering and remarked it as one of his “I made it” moments. 

By the end of the conference, team clutch!, truly lived up to their name, clutching and achieving 1st Runner-Up with the prize of ₱300,000 worth of media value. The team was informed to expect features, photoshoots, and social media exposure through The Business Manual, which they hope will open doors to jobs, collaborations, and professional networks. 

Takeaways and The OrCom Edge 

For team clutch!, being OrCom students shaped not just how they communicated their pitch, but how they think and work together. Matt shared that their OrCom training taught them to “think beyond words” and communicate “with purpose and strategy,” aligning every message to be impactful and audience-centered. 

Brian credited the OrCom 105 (Dynamics of Public Relations) course for grounding his understanding of public relations and helping the team position Cancel Checker as more than just a marketing idea—“it could easily be developed into a PR campaign pitch.” 

For CJ, the competition proved OrCom’s reputation for versatility for “even without deep AI knowledge at first, we quickly adapted, learned, and applied what the brief was asking for.” He emphasized, “That adaptability is an OrCom edge.”

Looking back, the team’s experience felt both surreal and transformative, especially now that they are being recognized as one of the outstanding student marketers of the country. “It wasn’t just a moment of victory, it was a glimpse of that dream slowly coming to life,” Matt said, as he described the moment their team’s name was called on stage and his aspirations of being one of the top marketers of the generation is becoming a reality. 

Meanwhile, Brian reflected on the honor of representing UP Manila, calling the win “incredibly rewarding and humbling” and a reminder that “success isn’t just about winning—it’s about growing, collaborating, and representing with honor and excellence.” 

CJ added his humble take on not yet seeing himself as one of the country’s top student marketers, “But I’ve realized that being a ‘top marketer’ isn’t just about titles or trophies. It’s about how well you can solve problems. Every competition, every case, is about tackling a brief and that’s what I love doing.”

Together, CJ, Brian, and Matt carry forward lessons in empathy, teamwork, and perseverance. 

Their win is a testament of the OrCom edge: where risks shape one’s strength, intentional communication endures, and an empowering OrCommunity fuels lasting impact.