It’s a regular day at the Universal Robina Corporation (URC) offices in Tera Tower, Bridgetowne. While people bustle about on the streets below, the seventh floor feels a little calmer than usual. The lights are low, the air conditioning is comfortably cold, and there's a muted energy buzzing about as employees go about their business. We’re here to interview Jane Bernardo, Marketing Director for URC’s Agro-Industrial Group (AIG), and while the environment is conducive for listening, we're a little worried that things might be a little too tranquil to have the lively conversation we were hoping to have with her.
Jane poses with the URC AIG Marketing Team at 2024's Q4 townhall meeting.
That concern immediately fades away when Jane greets us at the door of the Presto conference room. There’s a warmth to her voice and a gentleness in her smile that fills the room. She immediately makes us feel right at home. It isn’t all that common for a 30-plus year executive like Jane to exude such a down-to-earth, welcoming presence, especially when said executive is one of the architects behind a brand like C2. It makes all the sense in the world, however, when you consider her humble beginnings.
For starters, one of her first jobs was as a promodizer.
Jane Bernardo grew up near the boundary of Caloocan and Malabon, in an area where financial challenges were common. Her father was a jeepney driver who later expatriated for a job, and was among the first Filipinos to do so with the “Overseas Filipino Worker” label. Her mother was a homemaker, as was her grandmother. Because money was tight, Jane chose to spend her summers working to earn a little extra for herself. One of her jobs involved promoting and selling merchandise—or "promodizing", for short—at one of the country’s largest bookstore chains, and it was there that she discovered her passion for marketing.
“First, you observe. Based on the observation, you make a change."
“That is how I started to understand the world of marketing and advertising. With small experiments I did, I realized later on that everything was connected to marketing,” she shares, a nostalgic twinkle in her eyes. “When you are assigned, it is not yet the busy season. It is only April, so you get to observe first. My first observation was that when the product is placed visibly near customers, sales become higher.”
Based on this and other observations, Jane started tweaking things around to see if she could improve sales. She positioned her products closer to the entrance, where shoppers tended to linger, and near the cashiers. She noticed people liked testing pens before buying them, so she encouraged it by placing sheets of scratch paper by the displays. She noted that customers often bought blue, black, and red pens together, and convinced the store to sell them as a bundle. Sales increased as a result, and so did Jane's excitement.
“Looking back, it was so satisfying to see that when you act on an observation, the result becomes better,” she explains. “First, you observe. Based on the observation, you make a change. That change then encourages consumers to change their behavior.”
Pursuing new dreams at URC
Prior to this experience, Jane’s ambitions were rather different from the life she eventually built. When she was little, she dreamed of being a homemaker like her mother – “All the skills that are being taught is for you to take care of the family,” she says. She shares that she’s never lost that nurturing instinct, and that she continues to carry it with her at work and in her personal life. Later on, she aspired to be a lawyer, going so far as to apply for a bachelor’s degree in law. When she realized her heart was in marketing, however, she shifted to the course she ended up completing: a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication Arts at the University of Santo Tomas.
She spent five and a half years in the advertising industry after graduating, moving to the client side as a brand manager for a local personal care corporation in 1994. Jane spent the next decade working for several food and drink manufacturers before finding her way to URC, where she’s continued to grow her career and nurture her family for the past 20 years. Becoming a part of the company, she says, was an eye-opener on URC's ambitions and how closely its values aligned with hers.
"I want to work with a company that helps me learn, helps me earn, and helps me make a difference."
“I joined URC Philippines shortly after they launched C2. Before joining, my impression was that URC was content with the status quo," she tells us. "When they launched C2, that was when I saw that they dreamed big. When you are outside, you do not always see how passionate URC is. If you know the company history, our founder Mr. John Gokongwei was entrepreneurial and always dreamed big. In the several rotations I had, I saw the passion and resilience in pursuing those dreams.”
“At URC, there is a relentless pursuit to always rank within the Top 3, if not the Top 1, in any category we are in. I want to work with winners. I want to work with a company that helps me learn, helps me earn, and helps me make a difference.”
“Through that, I wanted to be somewhere I could invest my time, earn, and support my family,” she adds. Throughout the course of our conversation, Jane routinely circles back her family. She speaks fondly of her children, the time she spends with her husband James, and how her happy place has always been wherever they are. Whenever a business trip takes her out of town for a few days, she makes it a point to schedule a short vacation with her family at the same destination. Even when she’s assigned to a position overseas, she shares, her family moves there with her.
Jane and family at her son Malik's wedding in 2024.
In fact, her family was with her when she accepted the role of Marketing Manager at URC Indonesia, moving there from her previous workplace in Jakarta. They lived abroad for just over three years, including the two years with her prior employer. When she was asked to take on the position of Marketing Director for URC’s Ready-to-Drink Tea division in 2007, her husband and children moved back to the Philippines with her.
It was during this stretch that Jane would get to work with the brand that made such a great impact on her when she first joined the company. She was tasked with shepherding C2, the very brand that helped her more fully appreciate URC's "dream big" culture.
A game-changing insight for C2
When Jane was brought on to C2, she saw a unique marketing challenge before her. Demand for the product was high, but sales weren't reaching their fullest potential just yet. After doing what has led her to success throughout her career thus far—getting to know the customer—she realized that a large part of the market only had a budget of 10 pesos for beverages. The solution? A new C2 product that would meet these customers at their preferred price point: C2 Solo.
When Jane presented the idea to Mr. John, he immediately saw the potential. URC invested heavily in the project, securing the necessary machinery and equipment to create a more budget-friendly option for a segment of the market that was clearly clamoring for C2. The new Solo bottles became a booming success, and are now a mainstay in groceries, convenience stores, households, and even among vendors plying EDSA. It has been part of C2's impressive portfolio ever since its debut, and played a significant role in C2 being identified as one of the country’s most-chosen drink brands in the 2025 Brand Footprint Report.
Since then, Jane has amassed award after award throughout her decades-long career in URC. In 2014, her work earned C2 a second-place win for Best in Marketing, and Nips White Chocolate second place in Product of the Year at the JG Summit Pride in Performance awards. At the same awards two years later, she took home the top prize in Best in Marketing, this time for her work with Jack & Jill Confectionary.
When her career took her to URC Thailand, her achievements extended to the international stage as well. Fun-O, a major part of URC's growing global presence, was named Thailand's Number 1 Biscuits Brand by Markeeter in 2020. In 2021, Brand Age named Fun-O Thailand's Most Admired Brand, while also recognizing it with the Market Leader Brand Award.
For Jane, all that success boils down to one of the most important tenets of marketing: you need to know your customer.
“When it comes to the science and art of marketing,” she says, “you understand your consumers’ needs and evaluate what your brand can offer. You then identify what is lacking or what opportunity exists to serve them better.”
“When business declines, talk to consumers. Talk to non-users. Talk to people who stopped buying your product. Look at what is adjacent. Identify other products or categories that you can develop beyond what you have today.”
It’s the same principle that led Jane to offering scratch paper as a promodizer as it is to her getting URC to invest in C2’s solo size: marketing is about people. As Jane puts it, marketing is about helping people make choices, and showing them why your product is the easy choice. Sometimes, she learned, the only thing stopping someone from making that choice is ten pesos.
For Jane, it all starts with understanding your customer on several levels. Observing them, listening to them, and figuring out how your product can take care of their needs is the foundation of marketing.
Leading the Agro-Industrial Group to greater heights
These days, Jane is working with URC AIG's marketing division, handling Robina Farms, Uno+ hog feeds, Supremo gamefowl feeds, and TopBreed pet food. Under her watch, TopBreed won 1st place for the Game Changer Award at the 2023 URChoice Awards, with Supremo Infinity taking home first runner-up for the Breakthrough Excellence Award the following year. More recently, TopBreed won Brand of the Year for a record 5th time at the 2025 World Branding Awards, built on the promise that the brand is the Filipino furparent’s most trusted kabalikat when it comes to their pets.
Because the product is manufactured locally, she says, TopBreed is able to provide fresher food than its international competitors – a key concern for many pet parents. The AIG division in general has seen tremendous growth with Jane due in large part to her team doing their best to understand their customers’ needs, and how URC can take care of them.
"Given the nature of AIG categories, growing the business goes beyond providing good product choice. We need to be a true kabalikat that drives mutual long-term growth for all stakeholders," Jane shares.
Jane with the URC AIG marketing team, along with AIG Managing Director Vincent Go and AIG Sales Director Gamby Diño.
URC AIG's biggest brand, Uno+ livestock hog feeds is now expanding from its bailiwick in Luzon, with efforts to better serve the Visayas and Mindanao regions being doubled. Supremo Infinity has become the group's fasting-growing brand, going beyond its complete product line offer; the Supremo Academy lecture series, for instance, strengthens the brand's community by providing customized masterclasses on gamefowl raising and farming. TopBreed has recently launched its dry cat food and TopCare cat litter to provide quality solutions for cat parents, and will soon be launching several other new pet food innovations.
Jane's innate instincts to care, observe, and respond to the needs of others are the definition of what it is to be a true kabalikat, and it shows both in her exemplary work for URC AIG and in her day-to-day interactions with the people around her.
Earlier, our conversation was briefly interrupted by a member of the staff who needed to pick up some boxes from our conference room. Jane shared a smile with him, asked him how he was, and apologized to us for the disturbance. She wished him a good day as he left, then returned to our interview with the same attentiveness she'd shown us since the beginning. As we interviewed her, she made us feel like she was doing her best to understand who we were, too.
In that moment, it became clear why Jane continues to achieve great things at URC. She’s the type of person makes sure that everyone feels taken care of, from her family, to her co-workers, to her customers, and even her interviewers. For her, marketing and care aren’t that much different from each other; rather, they fuel each other in business. It’s about addressing needs and making your solutions the easiest ones to choose, driven by how well you understand people.
And it's also why, no matter where you find yourself at the URC offices, the warmest room is wherever you will find Jane Bernardo.
