Hoy founder Seph Mayol (CDN/CHRISTIAN MANINGO)
THE EMERGENCE of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest in the mid to late 2000s gave advertisers yet another venue to ply their products and services.
The by-product of social media, the selfie, had become that tool to showcase these products and services as netizens post anything and everything for their friends and followers alike.
Since social media news feeds have their photo archives, these selfies have in effect made the man in the street an endorser of some sort—to influence people even if they’re not celebrities.
Netizens as endorsers drove Hoy! CEO and founder Seph Mayol to create a mobile app that would cater to our love for snapping shots whenever and wherever possible while advertising the products and services that these people “endorse” in their selfies.
Mayol and co-founder/chief technology officer Royce Albert Dy designed Hoy! as an app that will not only be useful to advertisers and the market they serve but is also identifiably Filipino.
“While we were doing our research, we found out that all the leading social media applications that the world enjoy today such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter were all developed in the US and there’s not really an app that came from the Philippines,” Mayol said.
“So far, we are the first developer to ever come up with this kind of mobile app. We are hoping that Hoy! will become an app that Philippines will be known for,” he said.
The two said that Hoy! Will serve as a brand placement social network for users to capture memories together with their favorite brands, post their photos on the network for their friends to see, and influence them to check out the brands featured in their photos.
Because a person’s decision to patronize a product or service is often heavily influenced by the referral or recommendation by either family or friend, Hoy! takes advantage of the influencing power of customers by making them instant brand ambassadors.
“We’ve been used to seeing products being endorsed by models or actors everywhere and these advertisements have little to no effect to us anymore because of the knowledge that these actors are paid to do it. However, if a particular product is being endorsed by somebody whom we personally know and whose judgment we trust, the credibility of the brand increases,” Mayol said.
He said Hoy! also works as a rewards program for users. Hoy!’s partner merchants have unique sets of goals that users must follow first before earning rewards.
Depending on the choice of the merchants, these goals may range from taking a selfie with the brand’s particular product, pose with the establishment’s crew, or taking a photo of the brand’s logo.
The rewards can be a free T-shirt or even a free gadget from an electronics brand.
Mayol said the merchants are clustered into three levels according to the equivalent value of the rewards they offer.
At the moment, Hoy! has 15 partner merchants in dining, food and beverage, electronics, clothing, and skin care, among others that are based in Cebu. Mayol said they will open their Manila Davao rewards next month.
Available for free on both Android and iOS, users simply have to download Hoy!
to their mobile phones and create their own account. To avoid spamming and fraudulent accounts, users need to undergo a two-step verification process.
Hoy! uses cutting edge facial recognition technology that requires a user to take a selfie photo inside a face outline overlaid on top of the camera view.
Mayol said this is the same technology employed by Jack Ma, founder of Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, used for his company’s facial recognition-enabled payments for Alipay.
As soon as the account is verified, users can already start choosing goals they wish to accomplish and share their selfies to their friends.
They can also like and comment on other people’s posts. Mayol and his team had drawn positive response for their app in Singapore, Hongkong, Vietnam, and Indonesia.
He said they hope to launch the app in these countries soon.
“Hoy! hopes to create a direct link between merchants and their loyal customers. With Hoy!, everyone is an endorser. And people will love their favorite brands even more when they are given
rewards for just sharing these brands to their peers,” Mayol said.
