In July 2011, the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) became the center of a national controversy, though what it was about exactly will vary depending on who you ask. To some, it was about art; to others, blasphemy. The uproar reflected a broader pattern in the Philippines, where tensions between free expression and religious sensitivities would surface time and time again. And at the heart of it was Emily Abrera — former president of McCann-Erickson and later as chairperson of the CCP — navigating a firestorm where neither side seemed willing to back down.
It ostensibly began with an artwork. Kulo (which translates to “boil”) was a group exhibition marking the 150th birth anniversary of José Rizal. It featured 32 artists interrogating Philippine society — what had changed and what had remained the same since Rizal’s time. Among them was multimedia artist Mideo Cruz, known for his provocative use of found objects and religious iconography to critique structures like organized religion and consumerism.
Cruz’s contribution to Kulo was the artwork Poleteismo, meaning “many gods.” It is a three-paneled collage exhibited locally and internationally since 2002 (also the backdrop of the 2006 music video called “Anghel” by Stonefree). It is also an assemblage of objects found in many Filipino homes — calendars, bus tickets, photos of celebrities, and images of Jesus and Mary. But the controversy ignited over specific details: a crucifix with a red phallus, another wrapped in a pink condom, and a statue of Jesus Christ with Mickey Mouse ears.
For weeks, the exhibit sat quietly in the CCP. Then, a late-night TV documentary program called XXX aired a segment on it. The footage, shot exposé style, framed Poleteismo as an attack on Catholicism, the growing godlessness of the nation at the height of the Reproductive Health bill debates.
Soon came the threats and lawsuits against Cruz and CCP officials. Church leaders condemned it, politicians called it obscene, and critics debated whether it could even be considered “art” at all. As chairperson, the late President Benigno S. Aquino III asked Abrera for an explanation. “He called to say, ‘Emily, baka naman, just to remind you where someone’s rights end and someone else’s begins.’ Sabi ko, ‘We’re not trampling on anybody’s rights. But we have never been censored. This is an artists’ haven. Please, allow me to manage this,’” Abrera says.
Abrera was called to a Senate hearing to clarify things. Despite the uproar, she kept the exhibit open, believing that silencing it would mean caving to pressure rather than fostering understanding. On August 5, she organized a forum called Dakdakan — a dialogue between members of the clergy and the artists. But when outrage escalated to death threats and attempted arson, Abrera made the difficult call to close the exhibit on August 9.
“I put forth the idea that we had a responsibility to the artists, that it was our duty to uphold artistic freedom,” Abrera told the panel of senators. “To encourage dialogue, a discussion of the art piece. The artists deserved a chance to explain what they were trying to say.”
“So many people had come to a judgment without actually having experienced the entire exhibit. You see, the entire exhibit was meant to reflect different points of view. Mr. Mideo being one of them… I honestly believed and continue to believe that it is our duty, as the Cultural Center of the Philippines, to provide a space where people can engage in this kind of discussion.”
They’re watching the entire exhibit on a tiny screen. We’ve lost the ability to see the big [picture]. It makes me weep. Ang lungkot ng ganoon. Pilit lumiliit ang mundo mo. Nandiyan na nga sa harap mo, ang laki-laki. Hindi na natin makita ang katotohanan. We don’t want to look at it. We want to reduce it so that it fits on a phone.
Two years later, in 2013, the Office of the Ombudsman dismissed all charges against Cruz and the CCP board, ruling that the artwork was neither obscene nor unlawful and was protected under free speech. “I saw some very ugly sides of society and organizations,” Abrera recalls, fourteen years later, as we sit in the sunlit living room of her son, Paolo. Maybe it’s hindsight or the decades she spent in advertising, but Abrera has a way of distilling chaos into something clear. To land a story into its most meaningful conclusion.
After all, discomfort is one pathway to growth. “It’s one thing to make art you want to hang on your wall,” she says. “But the art that makes you think, that makes you wonder… That’s the art worth thinking about.”
“Everyone said nakaka-bukas ng isip,” Abrera says. “It was good because everybody came to the CCP [to see the exhibit]. It was always hard to get people to come over there.” She recalls the televised Senate hearing and how people who might not have otherwise paid attention to an arts debate were tuned in. “The station announced they’d be returning to regular programming. But people called in, angry. ‘No, we’re watching. Put it back on.’ And so they did,” she says, smiling. “For once, nanaig ang kultura.”
Who Said You Have To?
Abrera is taller than you expect, one of the many things she inherited from her father, Franco Altomonte — a towering, boisterous Italian who arrived in the Philippines in 1942 with nothing but a trunk of books and a camera. A native of Florence, he would call the Philippines home after falling in love with a sharp-witted Ilocana named Catalina. Together, they had four children, each born in a different city, their home shifting as often as Altomonte’s work for the drug store Botica Boie dictated.
“This is the house we’ve lived in the longest,” Abrera says. The ceilings are tall and decorated with art and objects accumulated over the years. The furniture is arranged like she’s always expecting company, like the door is never really shut. The plants thrive, and the windows let in more than enough light. The cats she’s adopted have free rein over the place. The Abreras, it turns out, are cat people.
But even with her transient childhood, there were a few things that stayed the same. “We only took those two trunks over there,” Abrera gestures towards her father’s leather chests. They held the family’s books, clothes, and photography equipment. “Family was the most important thing,” she says. Everything else was just something you carried for a while before it was time to move on.
Her father didn’t believe in television, so family time was spent reading and talking. “My father loved to discuss,” she recalls. “Every night, he’d bring out his book — whatever he was reading — and find something interesting. ‘Tata, you read this,’” she mimics, referring to her eldest sister. “‘Then tell me what you think. Read it out loud so everybody can hear.’”
Unlike most Filipino families, Altomonte raised his children to question everything. It wasn’t enough to believe something — you had to know why. Every Sunday, Abrera and her siblings were expected to go to mass. Her father wasn’t against it, he just wanted to know why. “You have to go? Who said you have to go?” The nuns expected it, but he wasn’t interested in blind obedience. “If you want to go, go. But don’t do something just because someone told you to. Know why you want to do it.”
When her father was diagnosed with cancer in 1975, he approached it the way he had approached everything else: with curiosity. “I’m so excited for my next journey,” he’d say. He refused to let his family grieve him before he was gone. “He was my best friend,” Abrera says. “We had a really good, mutually respectful relationship. He was very open-minded, and I like to think I learned that from him. To have an open mind, for me, is one of the most important things to learn. To be able to step back and still respect the person even if they have a different way of seeing the world.”
A Loud Voice
It may not have been the golden age of advertising, but no one could deny the grip that advertising had on the national imagination in the ‘90s. Before the Y2K bug, before algorithms dictated desire, and virality wasn’t the only measure of success, advertisements could be more than just ads. They were a reflection of national identity and emotional currency. Commercials had the power to shape conversations, and people from different walks of life could sing along to the latest canned fish or cigarette jingle.
The industry itself was magnetic. It promised young creatives a certain kind of life where big ideas could be materially rewarded. If done well, they were broadcast on every television screen in the country. It was the coveted middle-class aspiration: to have all the flowers of a creative life and the wherewithal for a Makati apartment.
Advertising was not part of Abrera’s ambitions. Her late husband, Caloy, was the adman in the family. But they needed the extra income, so she thought copywriting was something she could do. Agencies, however, weren’t eager to hire her. She had no experience and was too close to a competitor. So she turned to her husband’s agency, J. Romero, and struck a deal: five months unpaid. If they liked her work, they could keep her. If not, she’d walk, no questions asked. After two months, they offered her a job.
Sa dami ng options, patak-patak na lang. Everything is surface-level. We skim the surface of everything we want to see and experience and, at the end of the day, what do we really take away?
By the time Abrera joined McCann in 1978 as a creative group head, she had already proven herself. Her sharp instincts, strategic thinking, and obsessive attention to detail made her one of the country’s most formidable creatives. She had the uncanny ability to balance a brand’s goals with messaging that resonated deeply with audiences.
In 1987, McCann landed the San Miguel Beer account, cementing its place at the top of the industry. Under Abrera’s custodianship, McCann would produce one of the most iconic commercials in the ‘90s, featuring a young Robin Padilla returning to his neighborhood to the tune of “Iba Ang May Pinagsamahan,” reinforcing the emotional connection of brotherhood that the brand has persisted on for decades.
When the ratified Constitution mandated the nationalization of agencies, Abrera was appointed president of McCann in 1992. Abrera was ready, but she understood that real leadership wasn’t just about market share. Advertising had power that could be used for more than just selling soap or beer.
“I always felt inside me that it was so easy to go over the line and start to sell something that people didn’t really need. We have to deal with clients who want this to be the first thing the Missus thinks of when she wakes up in the morning and the last thing she thinks of at night, and think that this is going to make her life more wonderful and beautiful, that she will be a greater wife because of this detergent. It’s ridiculous when you boil it down to that. That didn’t escape me, of course.”
She saw an opportunity to shift the industry. “It’s one thing to be the biggest leader, but it’s another to be a leader in thought and action,” Abrera recalls. She commissioned nationwide consumer insight studies to better understand Filipino consumers and society at large. “Agencies never owned the research,” she says. This gave McCann its competitive edge — the ability to create campaigns backed by verifiable insights rather than gut feel.
One such study focused on youth. “Young people were already changing. What they said or professed wasn’t always how they acted.” In the ‘90s, children expressed a lack of family time. Mothers were leaving to become OFWs, and fathers were left to raise children at home. The study revealed a mismatch between how fathers perceived quality time and what their children needed. Fathers thought providing was enough, but what children longed for was presence.
When she presented the findings to industry leaders and clients, the room fell silent. “I asked if they had any questions. Nobody raised their hands. Then one of our clients stood up and said, ‘I don’t propose to speak for everyone, but there’s a lot to think about in what we just saw. It’s not that we don’t have questions — it’s that I want to go home now and talk to my children.’ And then he left. One by one, everyone else stood up and left the room.”
Another youth study prompted her to confront television executives. When asked what they wanted to be when they grew up, a young girl answered, “Gusto ko paglaki ko, malaki ang suso ko.” Because, she explained, that was how you got on TV. It turns out that noontime shows regularly zoomed in on female dancers’ bodies. Executives denied responsibility, claiming children didn’t watch their shows. Abrera didn’t buy it. She mobilized a study that tracked how often these shots appeared.
“This has to change. We want a standards manual,” she told them. Networks resisted at first, but McCann called a press conference stating their dissatisfaction. When they pushed back, Abrera gathered the top three agencies and made a bold move: “We will pull our ads from your noontime shows.”
The agencies hesitated, claiming they only followed the clients’ wishes. Abrera pushed back. “We are the leaders in this industry. What do our clients know? They don’t even watch TV! They think their maids are watching, but their maids are watching with their kids.”
Every day, I try to defeat my ego. Nothing lasts. What’s your favorite ad? It doesn’t matter. It was only important at the time because it was contextual. Everything is contextual. What is it today that matters? What must we do today? What is important for us now?
Despite the lack of support, McCann pulled its clients’ commercials until the networks changed their content. “The announcement was simple: ‘We are McCann, the leading agency, and we are withdrawing all our clients’ materials. Our clients have agreed.’”
Competing agencies asked why McCann did it. Abrera replied, “You have a choice. You can pull your ads out too. This is for the good of everybody, especially children. We’re not going to stand by and let this continue.”
Because that, to her, was what leadership meant. “When you speak with a loud voice, nobody dares to question. And if people listen to you, then for heaven’s sake, use that power to do something good.”
Defeating The Ego
The noon light filters through the tall windows. A cat slinks past, disappearing into another room. Abrera is 77, some years past retirement, but still working. She’s the acting president of the Foundation for Communication Initiatives, a nonprofit that helps organizations sustain their programs through communication strategies. “I’m just making up for all the years I spent selling soap,” she says.
This is how she talks about herself — casually, never with too much weight. The list of roles she still holds is long: chairperson, director, trustee. But she doesn’t dwell on them. “I always say, ‘Maybe there’s something I’m supposed to do there. If you think I can help, why not?’”
Media and advertising have drastically changed since her time. There are more specialists than generalists, but she wonders what we may have lost along the way. “People come into marketing and think that within a year, they’re a whiz. This person is so magaling. Really? That’s so niche. That is such a small slice of society, who’s addressing all the other parts of it?”
She’s watched the world splinter: mass media fracturing into a thousand channels, audiences shrinking into smaller, more insular circles. “It’s a very fractured world,” she says. “Sa dami ng options, patak-patak na lang. Everything is surface-level. We skim the surface of everything we want to see and experience and, at the end of the day, what do we really take away?”
She sees it at exhibits, young people walking in, phones raised before they even look up. “They’re watching the entire exhibit on a tiny screen. We’ve lost the ability to see the big [picture]. It makes me weep. Ang lungkot ng ganoon. Pilit lumiliit ang mundo mo. Nandiyan na nga sa harap mo, ang laki-laki. Hindi na natin makita ang katotohanan. We don’t want to look at it. We want to reduce it so that it fits on a phone.”
Someone needs to be thinking about the bigger picture. It’s what she’s always done. At McCann, it was understanding audiences beyond the numbers. At CCP, it was holding space for artists and critics alike. At the dinner table of her childhood, it was her father handing her a book and saying, “Read this aloud. Tell me what you think.”
“Sana magising ang bayan. Totoo iyon,” she tells me. “Or at least enough people. There are times we’re in such a deep hole and it’s so hard to see the light. ‘Di ba dapat empowering ang media? Kaya lang parang it’s so fractured. It’s even hard to find your constituents. But then there are events that bring everybody together.”
What about hopes for her own legacy, I ask. She waves a hand. “That’s the stuff I keep away from. Every day, I try to defeat my ego.” A pause. “Nothing lasts. What’s your favorite ad? It doesn’t matter. It was only important at the time because it was contextual. Everything is contextual. What is it today that matters? What must we do today? What is important for us now?”
Outside, the light stretches lower across the floor. Her son moves in the kitchen, setting down coffee and a plate of fruit.
“All I care about now,” she says, “is how to be a useful lola.”
Rolling Stone Philippines Magazine — Coming Soon
