TBC Manila turns three! We answer creative FAQs.
This May-June 2025, TBC Manila turns three. Our small creative studio has found its feet post-pandemic, and we’re quite happy to be here. Over the years we’ve gotten plenty of questions, especially from curious creatives, about what we do. It’s always “how,” and never “why,” but I try to answer both questions, anyway. 😅 “Why” is the bigger question for me, always.
I’m Camille, founder and creative director of TBC Manila, and I’m answering the following questions on behalf of myself and my partner Mao.
Origin & Vision
How did TBC Manila get started, and how has that original vision evolved over the years? What does the name “TBC Manila” mean to you now, three years in?
There are two major beginnings for TBC, the first being my journey as a freelance designer circa 2012, and the second being when my husband Mao changed careers from finance to photography and we began accepting larger-scale projects together in 2019. My skillset had expanded from just graphics, web design, and brand building into more serious writing and strategy. Mao also expanded from photo to video work during the pandemic years. His auditing and accounting background added weight to our creative consultation.
For me, there was no great vision at the beginning, and there still isn’t. When you’re a graduate from a family with a struggling income, the cards on the table are few. You go to work. Or you freelance. Or you try your luck abroad somehow. There’s no fallback or capital or safety net. But as to getting a job here or abroad, I rather hated getting up early and commuting and having to ask permission for days off. I hated the idea of night shifts, which I know sounds picky as hell if you need the cash, but as much as possible I wanted to make things work without that unhealthy compromise. So I’ve simply always just wanted to work a certain way, and the biggest goal was to make that sustainable.
“I’ve simply always just wanted to work a certain way, and the biggest goal was to make that sustainable.”
So TBC Manila is, in a sense, some years older than its nominal three years. In 2020, the pandemic lockdowns shattered our first attempt at registering ourselves as a creative business. At the same time, we also lost our beloved cat, Blek. 2020 was such a huge setback — as it was for everyone — that I thought it was over for that kind of work. But by 2022, we had picked up most of the pieces. The economy seemed to be waking up once again. Still shaken from pandemic losses, I decided not to overthink the name. Fuck it. So TBC stands for The Black Cat, and To Be Continued. The Manila part is just as important — our personal roots are deep in the cities of Metro Manila, though we’d move to the province in the summer of 2023. Three years is a short time, so the name still means the same things to us: the continuation of a mission and the fact that we are grounded by our cozy home with our beloved cats. I’m still rather surprised that we’ve gotten this far.
How important is it to define a niche or specialization in the creative industry, and how did you approach this with TBC Manila?
I’m sure many service businesses can relate: it’s always tempting to diversify. Finally, though, we take care of most things that are artsy: branding, content creation, graphics, copywriting, creative direction, photo and video production. At first, I used to be afraid that this was too limiting, but now I’m sure this is quite a large range of things to be competent at. Slowly but surely, we drew the line at creative work. Everything else, we manage or outsource or totally refer away from us: media buying, performance marketing, on-the-ground activities, digital ad management, and more. It’s not that we can’t — with our existing human resource and project management skills, plenty of work is possible. But it’s important to know where to stop. Our boundaries protect not just our peace of mind, but our quality of work too.
While it's common these days for remote-working creatives to go after global gigs, TBC's business is grounded in local partnerships, with an almost purely Philippine-based clientele. Was this intentional? What has this revealed to you about working for and within your own culture?
We get this question a lot from both clients and fellow creatives, especially now that remote digital work is extremely common. How did we get a mostly local client base? It just happened this way, through referrals upon referrals since 2014. There has been the occasional offshore client, also through referrals, but they’re the minority. We’re endlessly grateful to all our clients who have referred us to other clients. Our website gives us increasingly more leads every year, yes, but for the most part, we’ve survived on word of mouth.
“It’s a systemic smashing and redecorating of a comfort zone.”
Many creatives are also curious about having a local design studio as a career choice. To answer that, yes, I know that in the Philippines, when you don’t have a financial fallback, going abroad is one of the strongest career options available. However, I had huge personal obstacles to this option. First, I could not begin to afford it. Second, I didn’t have a high-demand degree like a nurse or something. And third and most importantly, “madami akong arte.” I have many scruples. How can someone so undisciplined and anti-authority even consider working abroad? If I have to be up at 7AM tomorrow, I’ll want to sleep in till 11AM the next day. I want to do my groceries on a Tuesday when everyone else is at work. What does it matter as long as we do the work well?
I’ve always thought of it as like being a bounty hunter or assassin in some game. (Actually, that’s what Mao likes to think. I usually think of my work as that of a traveling wizard, like Gandalf or something. Why an assassin?!) Anyway, if you were an assassin-for-hire, or again, as I prefer, a wizard [Harry], it makes sense for you to accept jobs within your own known maps. Where the NPCs speak your language. Where you unlock new places and levels with each new quest.
Moving on from this metaphor… One of my life goals is to make good money in my home country. Where a lot of foreigners make good money. Where I enjoy the ocean and mountain breezes. Within my culture, I feel more free to be an individual who is both creative and commerce-minded. Within my culture, I feel more enabled to break norms and change ways of working. It’s a systemic smashing and redecorating of a comfort zone.
This was, hands down, the right call — I was able to spend my twenties exploring entrepreneurship with Mao and retreating back to freelance or regular work whenever things got tough. And things do get tough! Manila always reminded me of that line about New York: “If I can make it there, I'm gonna make it anywhere.”
“So there’s also this compulsion to do excellent work to lessen the inherent brainrot there is in all marketing.”
There’s a lot to love and hate about working with Filipinos. In the corporate world, we are a relaxed and laid-back bunch — great vibes, total personality hire, but often allergic to actually finishing projects. When “quiet quitting” and “slow living” became worldwide trends, we could already relate — those are our default states. We love a good team building activity, non-working holiday, and using up sick leaves at the beach. This would drive me up a wall if I worked at an office, but TBC Manila, as an outsourced supplier, is positioned just outside these corporate structures. We do brand training for in-house sales and creative teams; we set our own timelines and write our own KPIs.
So driven by both choice and necessity, I’m out here to work the way I want — excellently, helpfully, profitably.
We also believe in the power of local businesses to drive slow but sure change in society. So when working with local clients, while we of course stay data-driven and profit-oriented, we infuse all projects with a spirit of progressiveness. This is because the local brandscape shapes communities and lifestyles. Anything we do, we release into the world and into people’s minds. So there’s also this compulsion to do excellent work to lessen the inherent brainrot there is in all marketing.
Creative Partnership & Studio Life
What’s it like building and running a studio with your husband? What have you learned from working so closely together? How do you protect your relationship from being consumed by studio talk — or do you embrace the blur?
We’ve been friends for a long time, which probably helps internal communication. The boundaries come naturally — if it’s too exhausting to talk business at bedtime, then we don’t. But if we’re hyped about something and the ideas are flowing, then we talk about work anytime, anywhere.
“We’ve always known that, while we want and need to make money, we don’t want to compromise our physical and mental health commuting or working separate shifts.”
Mostly the challenge has been to protect each other from burnout caused by our own workaholism. It’s a matter of prioritizing quality time doing the things that matter most: bonding with our cats, exploring new places, hiking and biking and cycling, cooking slow, big, thoughtful meals, seeing friends, home improvement…
In a way, we quite like our work. Small wins and big wins are so exhilarating. But advertising is not “our passion.” Given the financial freedom, we’d love to be able to create a lot more: personal art, comfortable third places, and time for extensive travel.
At the same time, life is short. It’s wrong to keep waiting for that “one day” in order to start living happily together. A happy life together starts from day one, rich or poor. Your teens fade away as fast as a sunrise, and your twenties fly by, too. You want to be able to say you were as happy as you could allow yourself to be, all that time. From the start, we’ve always known that, while we want and need to make money, we don’t want to compromise our physical and mental health commuting or working separate shifts. Stick by stick and brick by brick, we built this “office” out of our home. Home came first, and it always comes first. Now, in our early thirties, we know it wasn’t a mistake to walk down this slightly unconventional path.
What would you tell people who dream of starting their own small creative studio?
One: Be at home in uncertainty. It will never go away. A high risk appetite is a must.
Two: Use everything you have. Money, connections, skills, charisma. We started with a laptop, a borrowed camera, and a lot of audacity. And an ability to enjoy the struggle. Let what you do have make up for what you don’t. When you have one foot in the door, charge in. If your plan is to fake it till you make it, that’s okay — but you also have to be able to step up and perform when it’s time. If you look around at your peers, you may observe what people want to do versus what’s holding them back. You may meet some people who have the capital but lack the confidence. You may also meet others who have talent, but are afraid to draw on personal connections. Then look inward: do you, too, have resources you’re neglecting to leverage? Opportunity-spotting is a talent all on its own. I’m always hoping to get better and better at it — to not be blind to open doors and windows.
Three: If you think you struggle with imposter syndrome, it will never go away. Because it’s true: you may never be the best. There will always be someone better. There is always room for improvement. It’s hard to balance a desire for excellence with a need to start doing business. It will feel foolish to market your services when you feel you aren’t good enough yet. But remember that the pursuit of artistic excellence is separate from how you, as a human, deserve to be paid for true and useful labor rendered. I’m definitely a better designer than I was ten years ago. But I gave what value I could. If I hadn’t charged my clients real money ten years ago, there wouldn’t be a TBC Manila today.
How has your perspective on leadership and entrepreneurship evolved since founding the studio?
We have grown so much. While I’m good at project management, I’m not as great at actual delegation. For someone who likes to write so much, it’s somehow harder to use my words when delegating tasks.
“The paperwork never goes away.”
Along the line, I was surprised to learn how the importance of human resource skills. It’s a weird thing to realize as someone who started out as a lone designer, freelancing in the wild. Handling clients and teammates, sourcing talent — the growth of TBC Manila meant a growth in my people skills. Something I didn’t ask for.
Presentation skills have also come in handy, much more than I initially expected. Never ever underestimate the power and value of a good pitch. We’re always relieved when pitches end with clients thoughtfully nodding — and we’re especially elated when we manage to leave them laughing and clapping (it happens)! Win or lose, it pays to set the tone.
Finally — and this is something I’ve hated and cried about since the year I graduated — the paperwork never goes away. But it’s the price of independence.
Creative Independence & Industry Perspective
How did you build and maintain your client base?
Read back to question #3 for most of my thoughts on this, but there’s an additional dimension. It’s the “If-you-love-them-you’ll-set-them-free” one.
I want retainer projects and repeat clients, yes, but not at the expense of “milking” them for cash for as long as possible. So, ever since I began accepting client work, I’ve practiced leaving clients with editable files, team trainings, and more. When Canva entered the design industry in a big way, I made it my norm for our social media content work. This was so that clients wouldn’t be pressured to have Adobe subscriptions for their in-house creatives. Also, I would train their in-house staff so that they wouldn’t feel pressured to return to my team after the project wrapped up.
“I suppose it does pay off to keep the energy flowing.”
This is especially true for branding work — I don’t believe in holding a brand identity hostage, especially for SMEs. They should be able to have files and writeups that can be cascaded to internal teams — even if they hire new people over the years. An example of what that looks like in action: we sometimes create brand typography rules that incorporate both paid and free font options so that our clients’ marketing is empowered to stay on-brand no matter the budget.
In the early years, I never knew for sure whether this would work out well for us in the end. “Here are your editable files and brand book. Back up your files! Go forth and multiply! You can now hire a cheaper designer and social media team. Sayonara!”
But it did work out in the end. Maybe the trust factor was there, or whatever. But clients kept coming back. Clients referred us to new clients. So I suppose it does pay off to keep the energy flowing.
There is a thin line between wanting to be paid well and taking advantage of people. We’re not 100% sure, but we’re betting that it doesn’t pay to be a bad guy in the long run. We try to keep things as win-win as possible. And I think that’s how we build and maintain our client base.
What parts of the creative industry feel outdated or misaligned with your values — and how are you pushing back through your work?
Our batch of millennials — for context, we graduated in 2014 — is very lucky to have experienced a bunch of positive norm changes in the workforce. Slowly, because of our collective work habits, we saw the rise of flexitime and remote work (a norm even more strongly enforced by the pandemic). It’s an atmosphere in which industry changes are welcome, even if they meet some (natural) resistance.
“Creatives shouldn’t be punished for doing their jobs. This is a destructive norm that has pushed so many talents out of the freelance market.”
For TBC Manila, we have always pushed back against the norm of companies paying creatives very late. We have optimized our accounting processes so that we, as much as possible, get paid on time — no matter how often companies imply that this “isn’t how they normally do things.” The bottom line is expected to deliver work on time and should be paid on time. Creatives shouldn’t be punished for doing their jobs. This is a destructive norm that has pushed so many talents out of the freelance market. We tell other committed creatives: don’t be afraid to walk away from unpaid projects. Don’t let finance departments sweet-talk you into being the losing party. Keep your contracts in order, of course — when you’ve covered your ass, you can be brave.
What strategies do you employ to ensure that your studio's work remains fresh and aligned with current trends?
It’s valid and viable to have creative work that keeps up with trends, and I admire creatives who can do that. But unfortunately, I don’t have it in me. I was born a lola. When I was sixteen I mispronounced “meme.” We’ve never been attracted to trendjacking. It would be too much hard work on our end, and trendy things have to appear natural. In any case, evergreen content is called for when it comes to branding and packaging work — which takes up a lot of our bandwidth.
Authenticity is always trendy. That’s our strategy.
Place, Resilience & Forward Thinking
How has living in Zambales influenced the kind of work you do or the way you work?
Moving from Manila to Zambales in 2023 — almost a year after TBC Manila’s founding — did not directly change the work we do, but it uplifted our quality of life. Manila had become stifling. The infrastructure just wasn’t keeping up with the economic activity, and between the rising costs of living and worsening traffic, we were becoming shadows of ourselves. We liked to be out and about, but we found ourselves trapped at home, with nothing much else to live for but work. Just seeing friends for dinner was too expensive. Supposedly “affordable” nature day trips were pretty hard to organize. Moving to the province changed all that. Just having space around, trees above and mountains beyond — it’s let us reconnect with our childhood selves and blossom into our real adult selves.
I’m sure that this, indirectly, contributed to our ability to keep working without burning out too drastically. Here, we can work on our overall well-being, which gives us the confidence to do business in an industry with such a high risk of failure.
How do you deal with slow seasons — creatively, emotionally, or financially? How do you navigate living in uncertainty — as a creative, a business owner, and someone outside the 9-to-5 system? What keeps you grounded or inspired during moments of doubt, disconnection, or burnout?
Home is what keeps us grounded. We refocus our efforts on lead generation, and if we can afford to revert to creating personal art, we do that.
Every year, we have two major slow seasons: the 🎄 Holiday Slump and 👻 Rainy Ghost Month. During the Christmas season, everyone just disappears. In January, people’s heads are full of fog, and probably lechon, so real work starts in February. This is always unsettling, as I’m usually really game to get back to work immediately after New Year.
Rainy Ghost Month lasts for much more than a month. The Chinese Ghost Month affects plenty of local businesses, coinciding with the mid-year rainy season when most people simply hold back on spending. This starts in June or July. Usually, the market revives in September.
I am still figuring out how to navigate these seasons, but at least we’ve accomplished the first step of expecting them. During downtime, we remember our wins and keep tabs on our opportunities.
Looking back over the past three years, what are you most proud of? What still feels like a work in progress? What kind of future are you dreaming up for TBC Manila and for the kind of industry you want to help shape?
I’m proud that following our intuition paid off more often than not. A lot of business decision-making is guesswork. Logic takes you far enough. With data, even further. But beyond that, you follow your heart.
This is a commercial creative business, and honestly, the long-term goal for me is to get out of it. Many years ago, in Design Principles class, one of my college professors once counseled us: “If you want to make good money, go into advertising.” My young, idealistic self rebelled against this idea. No way!
Yes way. Here I am. In my defense, this was one of the most artistic paths I could take which took the least amount of start-up capital and which gives me the most amount of personal freedom.
“The Black Cat wants us to be happy while he waits for us on the other side.”
As long as TBC Manila exists, it will always be a work in progress. I think we could have been more aggressive — gotten more leads, hired ten more people, expanded… But for Mao and me, TBC is our life’s experiment in conducting business in as ethical and professional a way as we can, while using the maximum bandwidth of our skills, and without compromising our health, home, and relationship. Maybe it’s not so profitable to give such attention to the thousand other real things you can find in life. But there’s only one sure thing about the future, which is that it isn’t guaranteed. The Black Cat wants us to be happy while he waits for us on the other side.
As you can probably tell, the work we do is very much intertwined with our personal beliefs and principles. Perhaps it’s a creative worker type of burden-slash-blessing. In any case, we each only get one life in which to find out how our careers play out. As much as I can afford, I don’t want to regret doing anything soul-quashing.
This is, and has been, such a fascinating journey. Each project, we learn and witness something different. Every new person we meet, a lovely new connection to the world. We’ve been really blessed. But the torch of advertising is one that should be passed down to younger and younger people every decade. Otherwise it gets too hot to hold. In the long run, we’re gearing to transition to slower, more creative pursuits, and bigger, more passive investments in the future. But you bet we’re enjoying this while it lasts.
I’m sure it sounds like I overthink work. Yes, I do. It can be distressing, but I also think it’s only right to take these matters to heart. You only get one shot at your teen years to think about what you’ll do in your twenties. You only get one round of your twenties to set the stage for whatever you’ll do in your thirties. I wanted to create space to live life. Find opportunities. Experience freedom and independence. Make time for adventure. Take on projects where we could practice excellence. And bit by bit, we achieved these things. We don’t have everything we want — we’re far from retirement-ready financial freedom — but we’ve checked plenty of boxes, and that’s a satisfying thing. When things are good, we usually try to stop and remember darker times. The lonely and risky decisions that would lead to better days.
There is one thing that Mao and I share, that make TBC Manila what it is: our risk appetite. What’s the worst that could happen? Become a taong-grasa, right? Or die? That’s how we both think — and so when endeavors fail, we don’t blame each other. We rest and try again.
So, I hope that all this sort of answers any curiosity people have about our work. It’s not exactly a unique line of work. It’s just creative advertising, branding, and production. But we do get a lot of questions 😆 and it’s oddly hard to explain at parties, and even in freaking banks. Get with the times, bankers, omg.
Happy third anniversary, TBC Manila. We’re going into yet another Rainy Ghost Month season at the moment — another season of simmering down and thinking about work, not just doing it. Oddly enough, I’m looking forward to the rest.
