As many people may have already seen or heard, we held the first Prototype SHOWDOWN in Manila between a crew that’s been representing Bacolod city since 2000 called Critical Breakdown, versus a newly formed all-star squad from Metro Manila, under the name Manila Soul. The purpose of this blog is to explain the “business, strategies and behind the scene’s” for this event.
Scenes from the OUR CIty Bboys battle between Manila Soul (Manila) vs Critical Breakdown Crew (Bacolod) on March 17, 2019 in San Juan City. Mark Demayo, ABS-CBN News
Firstly, the main objective of this showdown, was to give the Philippines the chance to witness what an OUR City Bboys “Showdown” is all about. Majority of bboys in the world have a strange mindset when it comes to the Breakin scene. Many Bboys and Bgirls think that the “competition tournaments” are traditional battles, and that any deviation from them isn’t keeping it real!
However, anyone who was breakin before the competition era explosion will know that battles are NOT what they used to be and that a REAL battle is only between two teams. The first main objective of the Showdown, is to bring it back to what battles use to be all about, where both crews will burn through all their arsenal, stamina and egos, ultimately proving who is the better squad, while earning each other’s respect and at the same time, giving both the crews and the audience, a battle that they will remember.
Just like a drug dealer will give a way a “hit” to hook a “custy”, my strategy here was to give the Philippines a dose of REAL BBOYIN & HIP HOP to make the dancers, audience and potential sponsors, want more!
This is the reason why this showdown was considered a real success, because everyone who went absolutely loved it, had the time of their lives, and can’t wait to see their city battle again!
Scenes from the OUR CIty Bboys battle between Manila Soul (Manila) vs Critical Breakdown Crew (Bacolod) on March 17, 2019 in San Juan City. Mark Demayo, ABS-CBN News
With that said, although I had the idea of creating this Showdown since January, we really didn’t start promoting it or working on the back end until 10 days prior to the event. I’m sure the Bboys were wondering why haven’t we promoted it. Why haven’t we started putting up posters all over the place and begun advertising it? Wouldn’t that have made sense to do that months early so people can plan?
Well, the truth is that I wanted to prove that this is a lot more different than the average type of Bboy event. These showdowns will not sell unless we get to the heart of why the showdown is important, which means, why the heck would anyone care to watch? People need an invested interest in order to want to go out of their way to see this battle, and that is what I did by just telling them what to do, which is, BE HIP HOP.
Back in my days in the 90’s, before the internet, cell phones and Bboys competitions, the only place we could find other Bboys was through “the grapevine” which means, word of mouth. When we heard of another crew, we would go out of our way to find them by phone or pass on a message through mutual friends that we were coming to find them at the next party we knew they would be at and battle them. This word of mouth would spread like wild fire and because we agreed on a time and place, the party would be packed because everyone that heard about the beef and drama would come to see the showdown. These days, in the age of the internet, with constant promotions and spam thrown in your face, people have become immune to the constant barrage of advertisements. 
People need 
something more real and authentic. There’s nothing better than a little old organic beef! All it took was for Critical Breakdown to officially call out Reflex from Manila on a facebook post and tag him which generated 73 shares. But it was the video reply from Reflex on his personal page which generated 87 comments, 182 shares and 8.5k views in just a few days.
In addition, i quickly whipped up a small teaser which gained 4.6k views and we also were able to film a small press conference interview the day before which gathered 96 shares and 6.8k views on facebook.
Now that might not sound like a lot in comparison to some viral online Bboy videos, but the target customers aren’t global online views, but rather, the target audience is only people from MANILA. However, that won’t be an easy feat for 2 reasons.
- It’s hard to get people to go out of their way to see something they have never seen or been to before
- In the Philippines because of traffic, people are weary of heading out to places unless they plan in advance.
So our goal was to rent a limited capacity venue, and invite a hand full of potential sponsors, supporters and investors into the Manila Soul team, while proving not only that the Showdown is the dopest raw entertainment they have ever seen, but also that we know how to properly brand and market and build hype around the event. We needed to prove that we can make this work with a limited amount of time, resources and budget, which we did! Now imagine if we had the time and financial resources? That is the question which we ask our potential sponsors!
Overall, what we are doing with OUR City Bboys, is helping the best bboys from every scene, become professional battlers by building a local fan base and business. The Philippines will be difficult because of the huge contrast in social classes. The poor are really poor, the middle class is poor, and the rich are super rich. There aren’t too many in between. What i’ve learned from this trip is that we need to build and market this league in two directions.
- Made for television: in order to keep it raw but maximize the number of viewers in the Philippines so that media and sponsors will want to be involved while keeping the street and gridiness aspect intact
- Turning the raw bboys into professionals: Cleaning them up, teaching them how act and be around a higher social class, that way we can market these teams to a higher social class who has the money to pay to watch the best Bboy battles in their lives.
Perhaps this is the exact same way this needs to be done around the world, the same way that rappers and skaters have done it. Only time will tell, but we are on track.
Will be back to the Philippines in November for the SEA GAMES, and I hope to set up the Manila Soul team against a Taiwan team! Perhaps the Dream Runnerz? If not Dream Runnerz, who?
PRESS CONFERENCE INTERVIEW + TEASER
MY VLOG ABOUT THE EVENT
FULL BATTLE WITH SCORES
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