When Candice Iyog joined the marketing team of Cebu Pacific Air back in 2002, the airline had but a dozen planes. They were secondhand DC-9s, taking passengers from Manila to various islands within the archipelago.
Today, the nation’s largest carrier has over 85 aircraft, flying as far as Dubai and Australia. In July, Cebu Pacific announced it had signed a memorandum of understanding with Airbus for the purchase of up to 152 A321neo planes for USD 24 billion (1.4 trillion pesos), based on list prices. It would be the largest aircraft order in Philippine aviation history.
“We will continue to fly where Filipinos are living, working. We’re improving the lives of the people in the communities we serve,” says Candice, now CEB’s Chief Marketing and Customer Experience Officer.
“We’re so much bigger now than when we first started, and yet I can still feel that sense of energy, that dynamism that comes with a startup company. We still have that entrepreneurial mindset, that founder’s mentality that’s consistent across all Gokongwei Group companies,” she says. “It’s like the best of both worlds. We get to work in a company that allows us to exercise our entrepreneurial muscle, while being supported by a corporate environment. It’s a perfect formula: a business where the discipline and work ethic is so strong.”
In June, Candice was named Chief Marketing Officer of the Year at the 2024 Asia Pacific Tambuli Awards.
“I wasn’t expecting it at all. It’s nice to be recognized, but we don’t do what we do for awards. We show up and do our best, in whatever we do,” says Candice. “When I found out about it, it felt good because it was an affirmation of the work and the importance of doing things purposefully. It's an affirmation of how we package and communicate the brand, of how we continue to do the right thing for everyone. Over the years we’ve been very intentional as we work on product development and the customer experience side. What we say and what is experienced by our customers are aligned.
“We’re not for everybody and that’s okay. Some people want seats that recline all the way back, free meals, lounge access. We don’t provide business-class amenities because we go back to our goal, which is to make flying more accessible to more people through safe, reliable, and the lowest fares, because that’s also what the value-conscious traveling public needs.
“My personal mission is to make air travel more accessible to every Juan, because of what travel allows people to learn. I can honestly say that I have also been changed,” she says.
Candice confesses her life now is very different from the introverted lifestyle of her younger days.
In college, she says she was an average student and not very sociable, but she knew that if she wanted to get a job in the future, she needed to be active in a school organization.
Candice joined the Ateneo Management Association (AMA), and took part in their various activities. One day, when she walked into the org room, a group of members was meeting and they asked if she would be interested in joining their party for the org’s upcoming elections. It was something she hadn’t thought about doing before, but why not?
We’re so much bigger now than when we first started, and yet I can still feel that sense of energy, that dynamism that comes with a startup company. We still have that entrepreneurial mindset, that founder’s mentality that’s consistent across all Gokongwei Group companies.
“I’ve never actively sought out anything, but when an opportunity comes, I take it,” Candice says. “Of course, I know enough to know what I don’t know, so I ask a lot of questions often, a lot of stupid questions. That’s how I navigated through things in life and I’m just lucky that it's led me to where I am today.”
A year later, when the next AMA elections were announced, Candice thought about whether she should consider running for president.
“My Dad said, ‘you should do it,’ so I thought, okay, I should do it. I did and I got it,” says Candice. “I recognized there was an opportunity and worked on it but I guess I was also lucky that I had the support I needed to win.
“Daig ng makulit ang magaling, and I think I’m just makulit. To the point that I can be very obsessive, very extra,” says Candice.
Her first job was with Universal Robina Corporation. They had found her in a book where Ateneo put the résumés of all its graduates.
She was hired as a brand assistant in 1994 with a monthly salary of P7,500.
“I think URC is the school of hard knocks. They teach you entrepreneurship. They teach you everything,” she says.
Candice started with the pasta and noodles portfolio, then moved on as brand manager of Piattos and corn flakes.
“As the brand person, you’re responsible for everything. In the morning, you have to fill out a sheet that shows all your numbers. Wrapper levels, ingredients. You become like a mini general manager of your brand.”
One day, she was handed a manual by her boss, Benny Sanchez.
“His boss, Mr. James [Go] had bought a new machine, and I had to learn how to use it, how to make these new multigrain chips that Mr. James wanted to call Nova,” recalls Candice.
And she did.
“We went to supermarkets to negotiate display spaces, interviewed sampling girls. We did field visits everywhere. The amount of control and freedom we were given to make decisions for our brands back then was unbelievable. We had so much independence. It was so much fun.
“Ultimately what URC taught me was the founder’s mindset, that sense of entrepreneurial thinking because you had to make pakialam everything in the process, every step of the way,” says Candice.
Four years later, Candice was setting up an event at the pool area of Holiday Inn. One of the hotel guests asked what was going on, and she explained it was for a URC event.
The guest gave her his card. He told her he was the general manager of Nabisco and was setting up a branch office in the Philippines for regionally sourced product distribution.
Serendipitously, he was looking to build a team.
Candice took his card, called him, and got the job of marketing manager for Nabisco Philippines.
“We were a small business, but the setup and interactions were very international. We had different stakeholders with global responsibilities,” says Candice.
After a total of seven years in the food industry with URC and Nabisco, Summit Media president Lisa Gokongwei Cheng reached out to Candice to ask if she could help set up Jobstreet, a recruitment site, working with Malaysian counterparts.
“Jobstreet was where I was given the experience of building a company and running it as general manager,” says Candice.
“I’ve had many mentors in my life. But the one who taught me the most by giving me the confidence over time was Lisa,” says Candice. “When you go to Lisa with a problem, she doesn’t give you the solution, she guides you on how to solve it yourself. She gives you the freedom to figure out things on your own, while at the same time she’s always there, always fair.”
Candice was with Jobstreet from 1997 to 2001, the year it went public.
“I always said my job was to make myself obsolete. When it was well-established and a clear successor was ready, it was time to leave Jobstreet,” she says.
Globally, Cebu Pacific is well-respected as a successful low-cost carrier. We know why we built this airline, we know what its purpose is. It’s done so much for families, for communities, and for nation building.
That’s when Lisa’s brother, Lance, invited Candice to join Cebu Pacific as part of its marketing group to help with its loyalty program.
“If there’s anything that’s consistent across all Gokongwei companies, it’s this entrepreneurial mindset. For someone like me who was never going to set up my own business, this was perfect. I wanted to learn, be able to experiment, do things fast. And I did. We were a scrappy, organic team and we thrived,” Candice says. “To be part of that scrappy history is a privilege.”
Candice says her boss back then was Tim Jordan, and he was obsessed with the low-cost carrier (LCC) business model.
“When we started, we weren’t an LCC, but we transformed into one. Tim worked on direct distribution, high aircraft utilization, all the foundational elements that make an LCC work,” Candice says. “Lance was also super hands on then.”
It’s been 22 years since Candice came on board, and she says the organization has changed a lot over the years, especially now with Mike Szücs on board as chief executive officer.
“There’s more alignment in the thought and action within the organization,” says Candice. “In the past, people kept quiet at meetings, didn’t ask questions. And then people talked after the meetings, so communication was less effective and inefficient. Now, the discussions happen during meetings. More productive conflict compared to conflict avoidance. It’s never boring.
“I tell young people, ‘Do not be afraid of conflict.’ We’ve become very sensitive and polarized. Sometimes we refrain from pushing or asking because we’re afraid to offend. But this is where the magic happens. The magic is in the messy middle. There is always a way to ask the question respectfully to get to a better outcome. It becomes less about who is right and more about what is right for the organization,” she says.
Candice says feedback, positive or negative, is a gift.
“We try to be generous in our interpretation of customer complaints. I know that people give it to us with the expectation to do better, so we try to take everything as constructively as possible,” she says. “If people care enough to give us feedback, they still believe we can change.”
Candice believes that more than just a business, Cebu Pacific is a force for good.
“Before we started flying to Dubai, it was only Emirates flying the route. There was no successful long-haul LCC operation. But it was clear why we had to do it – it’s the Filipino diaspora and doing this meant that OFWs can visit their families more often. On our maiden Dubai flight, we gave out a hundred tickets to the embassy and then flew home 100 OFWs. Where there are Filipinos going for work, that’s where we’ll go.”
“We lost money for three years during the pandemic, held to focusing on what mattered most at that time: transporting life-saving vaccines. Whenever there’s civil unrest, and people are stranded, we help with OFW repatriation. We flew to Kuwait to fly Filipinos home,” Candice says.
Cebu Pacific is thriving, and its people are happy. Candice says CEB’s corporate culture has been something they have worked on for many years.
“Globally, Cebu Pacific is well-respected as a successful low-cost carrier,” Candice says. “We know why we built this airline, we know what its purpose is. It’s done so much for families, for communities and for nation building.” -- Yvette P. Fernandez
