Building Brave Connections

In an age when attention is won in seconds, trust is still earned over time. 

And one team is placing its boldest bet on collaboration–combining the power of insights, digital transformation, communication, engagement–and bringing together the expertise of four leaders around a single purpose: to bring brands closer to customers through “fearless connections.”

“We have assets that will allow you to understand your customers, communicate to them, learn from them, and be able to take care of their digital B2B (business-to-business) needs,” says company President and Group Chief Executive Officer Nikko Acosta. “The purpose of Brave Connective Holdings, Inc. (BCHI) is to uplift the B2B economy and make it more digital through the companies we have today.”

Brave Connective integrates four brands: digital marketing agency AdSpark, data hub and analytics Inquiro, business messaging group m360, and e-commerce and loyalty solutions provider Rush. It was established in 2022, initially as AdSpark Holdings, Inc. The opportunity to lead the new venture presented itself to Acosta, who has been part of the telecommunications and digital solutions firm for two decades and counting.

“My CEO asked me what I wanted to do,” he recalls. “Based on my training in different parts of the business, I wanted to be a CEO of one of the Globe companies. By March that year, he said I was ready to run a new business focused on digital communications.”

Acosta adds, “I wanted a leadership role that is separated from the main company. It's your own program, your own people. You get to build a culture from scratch. The success will be flowing through you. The buck ends with you.”

At Brave, Acosta is the first to admit that he is surrounded by people who excel in their respective fields. “They’re better operators, salespeople, and marketing and product people,” he says. “My role is to blend them together and make them a cohesive whole as a mentor.”

On board to lead Brave’s talent are three CEOs: Manny Fernando of AdSpark, Ramon Hirang of m360, and Senthil Kumar of Inquiro. To say that the team is like an assembly of heroes from comic book label DC (Detective Comics) would be a compliment to the Brave leadership team. Acosta is an avid DC fan who lent his posters of characters like Superman to the office. Hirang has a couple of DC books on his desk. Kumar is a fan of Superman and Batman. Even Fernando admits to being a DC fan, although not as big as his colleagues.

All four executives literally meet at the Metropolis, a large conference room at the Brave office named after the fictional city where Superman lives. 

“It gives you the math that there is always a solution in literature that you can use in real life and have fun at the same time,” Acosta says of his DC fascination. “Superman is the most human character. When you age, the ‘man’ portion becomes more critical than the ‘super,’ because at the end of the day, you may have all of the powers but you still don't have the complete understanding of what's happening with you. It's really just like technology; I have technology, what can I use it for? To make the world better and to make myself a better person, of course.”

“We touch the entire length and breadth of a business vertical that in turn touches human life,” expounds Kumar, who joined the firm three years ago. “Brave is an opportunity builder: We help a brand make money, save money, or manage risk. Our clients should be able to respond to an opportunity. We make them respond in an optimal way.

“We shape the opportunity. But more importantly, we create a personality. From the perspective of Inquiro, we utilize the freshness of data to help prioritize sales and get potential customers at scale. That is data-driven lead generation. Let's say a client comes to us, and he says he does not have a mobile number. He can still find the right audience through his existing attributes and bring in new business.”

The Inquiro CEO believes that data comprise the foundational fuel for any kind of modern innovation in every industry that touches human life. “Content is a vessel, and media are the engine that propels all of it. So, awareness, acquisition, activation, revenue retention, rewards, and loyalty have to be end-to-end. That is how the founding vision of Brave came up at the beginning.”

The company has since scaled up its operations, declares Hirang. “We expand our capabilities together, bringing these technologies and solving problems in the ad tech ecosystem. Our respective domains enable us to cater to a broader segment of the industry, not just locally but also globally.” The m360 CEO leads the team that consolidates all siloed business units that offer messaging and communications for marketing campaigns, business promotions and campaigns, and one-time security PINs, to name a few.

“What attracted me to m360 when I joined was the opportunity to bring a new kind of messaging platform, converting traditional messaging into a more customer experience-centric platform that offers not just SMS but multiple channels like Viber, WhatsApp, e-mail, and even voice in a single platform under a unified plan for customers’ ease of use,” he says. “All companies undergoing transformation in the digital space need an accompanying messaging solution, and the growth of digital money, logistics, and e-commerce will require the ability to communicate with their respective customers.”

The growth of the business has made Brave’s mission clearer and more purposeful, according to Fernando. “What evolved is how we create connections at the scale of what we can do with data technology and artificial intelligence (AI),” explains the AdSpark CEO. “The transformation of media now makes it easier to reach audiences. The transformation of data helps us become more intelligent in understanding behaviors. And when you look at what we’re trying to do in terms of creativity, it helps create more meaningful campaigns for our customers. We work with our clients in really having a more purposeful proposition and connection with audiences. We are relentless in bringing about what we have discussed with our client partners.”

Partners, according to Acosta, are among the four pillars of Brave. “They are our external ecosystem that flows through the enterprise and small- and medium-business segments,” he says. “We provide an understanding of what they need, and if there is an opportunity to be symbiotic in terms of what we can offer and what they need, that becomes the start of a relationship through the years. So, now we have relationships across global companies and companies based in the Philippines that are making headway in the enterprise economy through digital programs, which we also want to say are a very critical inner segment.”

The next important pillar is their patrons, the shareholders “who trust Brave to be able to bring back returns on their investment.” Completing Brave’s “circle of joy,” according to Acosta, are its people and purpose. “We have to remember why we wake up every day to be a part of Brave. Our people are our gifts, our partners are our assets, and our patrons are our shareholders. We must bring back returns for us to move forward.”

Of the 300 people at Brave Connective, 90 percent are millennials, reports its president. Recently, the company was recognized by its “circle of joy” as a Great Place To Work, with 87 percent of its employees saying that it is an employer of choice based on their workplace experience. 

“We prioritize understanding who we are,” reveals Acosta. “Everybody has a story, and the story sometimes happens to be compartmentalized based on the generation you came in with. You have Millennials as parents, Gen Xers as guardians, Boomers as mentors, and Gen Z as the grandchildren. It's a family.

“That's why we call ourselves Brave. We build our purpose together so that we understand one another. And that purpose is clear. And when that purpose is clear, we can move forward, understanding that the styles of execution are different. So, in many ways, that culture is the result of fundamentally understanding who we are, accepting that we are different and, at the same time, the same, and using the stories of the past and the potential stories of the future to take care of our present.”

The presence of different generations also results in different types of leaders, according to Fernando. “As a dynamic organization, you need to understand how you will nurture that and ensure that they’re involved in the whole process,” he intimates. “It’s one thing to give them an objective, but another to get their buy-in to rally toward that objective.”

“Our people are the engines that drive our growth,” adds Hirang. “All the innovation we do is a collective result of talent and effort of everyone at Brave. We try to make sure that in everything we do, we put people first in our minds.” 

Trust is an integral part of fostering a psychologically safe work culture, says Kumar, who has worked in the Philippines for 11 years. Along with a sense of belonging, growth, and well-being, the emotional wisdom and response of leaders translate into a culture that shapes human performance and business outcomes. “I do not want every decision coming from me; that means I am creating foot soldiers. I want to have a kind of transformative leadership where I am creating future leaders rather than soldiers.”

The excitement is in knowing that everyone at Brave is collectively transforming the industry, joins Hirang. “Our mission since day one has been to provide all these capabilities to our enterprise customers in the Philippine market. We're making it easier for enterprises to solve their problems and alleviate pain points in marketing, advertising, communication, data, even AI. All these capabilities come together with Brave Connective as a single driving force for us to serve our customer base.”

“Blocking the noise behind the background is basically what we do when you use technology to help you understand how you can make your work and life better,” Acosta says in closing. “We started with AI and other types of technology, with the basic knowledge that we need to make things better. We have goals to help our patrons, our people and our partners. And technology happens to be the enabler. If it's AI today, then it could be different tomorrow. It was different years back, but at the end of the day, they need to inform and communicate and to build a relationship has never changed since the time that we started when I was in elementary, building those cans in a string. I think it all starts with you understanding what it is for, and then you can now build on it eventually to make it better.

“What will you miss if you don’t work with us? Just a chance to work with a very young company that brings its purposes together. That is to make lives better, understand the customers and to make sure that communications are connected bravely,” he closes.