Toby Gatchalian, MPAV’s chief commercial officer, echoes Pangilinan’s nationalistic perspective when sharing their vision for Carmen’s Best. “There is a huge opportunity for the private sector to help elevate, modernize, and ultimately, make fresh dairy products more accessible to Filipinos,” he starts. “Improving the agricultural sector is one way the Philippines can become more self-sufficient. One integral part of this sector is dairy, which is found in a wide range of products, from ice cream to yoghurt and cheese, and is an important part of a healthy diet.” He continues on by sharing some shockingly dismal figures. “Unfortunately, 99 per cent of the dairy demand in the Philippines is served by imported products, and 70% of that are powdered milk products and not fresh. This is primarily driven by low yields in dairy farming as the Philippines has not been able to go beyond traditional farming practices.”

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Acquiring Carmen’s Best is only the first step in achieving their lofty goals with noble intentions. Almost immediately, they jumped into relaunching the brand to coincide with their plans for its future. Only months following their announcement, they reached out to Manila and Tokyo-based CIA-Bootleg Manila or CBM (a brand and innovation firm) to work with them on developing a new brand DNA. “To put some perspective, we did not let go of Carmen’s Best brand identity. In fact, we recognise the power of the brand’s origin story and how it connected with people who know it,” Gatchalian explains. “But, in order to grow this brand and get more people to appreciate what it stands for, we needed to take those key elements of its story—the 100 per cent fresh milk; the use of premium, choice ingredients; the process of #Noshortcuts; being proudly local; and the joy created by doing one’s best and sharing it. Not just into a visual identity or new pack, but into an entire brand DNA that will be created into an entire experience that people will have as they get to know and love the brand in the coming years.”

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The months of research, taste testing, customer interviews, and psychological analysis yielded new learnings that were previously unrecognised or have become a part of the brand’s evolution. CBM’s founder Aaron Palileo shares: “Carmen’s Best has always been about being uncompromising in quality, with its ingredients and processes. But, what we found to be even more significant is the underlying reason for its insistence in quality— the desire to share your best with others.”

MPAV’s head of marketing Mia Mediana highlights CBM’s learnings that resonated with them and how they plan to apply them to Carmen’s Best. “First: is that ice cream is always a blissful treat and trip for everyone, it really is an iconic and well-loved dessert,” Mediana enumerates. “Second: is that people don’t necessarily know that not all ice cream are the same, and how much of a difference fresh milk makes, and the type of ingredients used. Third, that people do have the appreciation for anything that’s made with effort, with love, and with passion. Which is why our main task is to really bring out these stories of Carmen’s Best, because not a lot of people know this. On a superficial level, most would just say that Carmen’s Best is a great-tasting, expensive ice cream. But once they get to know and taste the brand, they realise that it’s something to proudly support.”

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Recently, Carmen’s Best launched their new brand DNA highlighted by a sleek new look. Mediana says it’s too early to really get an accurate public consensus, but the reactions have been mostly positive. “Most people also just got to know and appreciate what goes into every Carmen’s Best pint,” she adds. “One thing that people also gravitated towards was the very simple yet impactful brand tagline, ‘There’s no better joy than doing your best’ which is pretty much applicable to anything else you put your heart and soul into in life.”

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This new look will surely get a lot of face time in the coming months as Carmen’s Best opens a new store in SM Mall of Asia, launches their limited edition holiday flavours, and upload some heartwarming and exciting online content. But, the steps toward substantial food independence are within reach with their full dairy line in the works. They are growing their herd from 85 to over 1000 and the cattle will be housed in what Gatchalian describes as “the best facility to ensure cow comfort and the highest yield.” They are working at modernizing their practices but also making them sustainable by planting their own feeds, building a solar farm, a water treatment facility, and a waste treatment plant. To accomplish all this, they built a community around them that consists of farmers, scholars, government organizations, local government units, who share their vision of uplifting the state of the local dairy industry.

But, in the end, it is all about connecting with the consumer by delivering a product that they can love and trust, because there is joy in giving the best. As Magsaysay once pointed out, “Imagine, they make their children eat it. And for you to make your kids eat the ice cream, that’s a lot of trust. You just don’t feed your kids anything. I believe that it has to pass a certain standard before you give it to your kids. I think that’s a very special achievement.”

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