Kroma Entertainment Records ‘Outstanding’ First Year

MANILA – A year after Kroma Entertainment began bringing “tradigitial” (traditional and digital) experiences to the public, the rising powerhouse in the entertainment industry continues to deliver meaningful and innovative content to the public.

Helping Kroma CEO Ian Monsod rock the boat over the past year have been the five heads of its business units — all women.

“Personally, I also grew up with four sisters,” Monsold told ABS-CBN News. “So it’s easy for me to work with our business unit heads. Talk about diversity.”

Anima is Kroma’s production studio dedicated to quality storytelling led by Bianca Balbuena. To date, Anima Studio has garnered critical acclaim and numerous awards for crafting visually stunning and compelling stories across genres.

“We tell stories through conversation, and that’s through the Anima podcast, which offers thought-provoking and insightful conversations around culture, with a variety of voices and perspectives,” Monsod told .

“We also tell stories through our partner brands, weaving our brand stories into the mix and promoting their brand narratives for our audience. We do this through Secret Menu, a full-service creative and production company that provides branded content solutions, commercials, live video, event coverage and music videos.”

Culture, content, conversation, community and business are some of the words that represent Kroma PubCo, our digital publishing network that is home to new culture and great content.

“Under the Kroma PubCo umbrella are our own publishing labels Complex Philippines, FreebieMNL, which provides an interesting glimpse into the glamorous lives of favorite celebrities, and Wonder,” says Monsod.

Kroma PubCo also launched Co:Lab, a creative agency and community aggregator that captures brand stories and explores innovative ways to tell them, using the perspective of a media specialist and the communications solutions of a digital publishing specialist. The business unit is represented by Sarah Santiago.

PIE (Pinoy Interactive Entertainment) channel is Kroma’s ultimate win-win network, the first and only traditional digital entertainment channel led by Jill Go.

Recent new shows from PIE include “Kung Saka-Sakali” by Ogie Diaz, “Mga Kwento ng Dilim” by Charlie Dizon, “TCO (The Chosen One): Kakatacute” by Angeline Quinto and “Ur Da Boss” by Melai Cantiveros.

LiveMNL is Kroma’s events agency responsible for planning and creating world-class and groundbreaking events live, on-time, online, on-budget or hybrid. To date, it has hosted drone shows and events using XR (extended reality) technology, virtual stages and music festivals, such as “Head in the Clouds Manila” last December, which featured 26 international and local artists.

The division is represented by Denise Seva, who is also the head of Paradise Rising, the Filipino sister label of Asian American music company 88Rising.

NYMA, short for Now You Must Aspire, is Kroma’s talent management agency and production company, delivering key talent content across all digital platforms.

NYMA, represented by Kat Bautista, also provides strategic consulting to executive clients and local representation for prominent international artists.

NYMA is proud to introduce its newest talent, TikTok star and lumpia queen Abi Marquez, whose cooking videos that go viral on social media are redefining food content creation in the country.

Over the past 12 months, Kroma has extensive experience building community, engaging audiences and leading events that have set the standard for their consumer and business audiences.

The company’s leaders and 160 strong employees helped Kroma succeed in its first year.

“Across our portfolio companies, each division has its own unique way of measuring success, but it’s always about some kind of engagement or impact metric,” Monsod explained.

“Measuring success is tricky, especially on a platform that’s democratized by technology. Before, there were only a few things to measure. Audience size, reach, technology. Now, there’s a lot of other things. Engagement comes into play.

“At this point, with the infinite supply of content around, the challenge is how do you stand out from the clutter. How do you differentiate yourself? It all has to come down to some kind of reach or engagement metric.”

Monsod has been very happy over the past year and all Kroma units have performed very well on their respective platforms. Kroma enters a strong second year with many programs, events and activities to look forward to.