Why auto brands need an ambassador like #HondaPro Jason
Last weekend, the local custom car culture community welcomed in a grand way the hugely popular Jason Richmond more known worldwide as #HondaProJason. Trap H Productions, together with Honda Cars Philippines, organized an all-Honda car show, plus meet and greet for #HondaProJason, or HPJ as we came to know him.
Who exactly is HPJ?
With over a combined 1.1 million followers across Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, most people this side of the world will know HPJ as the world’s single biggest Honda-only car content creator for more than two decades. HPJ visits car meets, events and activities catering to Hondas, meeting with enthusiasts the world over, featuring different Hondas of all models from all generations, and of course the people who drive them and the communities they are part of. HPJ lives and breathes Hondas, giving useful insight, creating content that helps bridge Honda communities together from all over the world with the quality content he produces.
But in the United States and in other parts of the world, Jason earned his “Pro” moniker because he is actually a very knowledgeable Honda product guru. Owning a vast collection of Hondas himself, he knows the philosophy behind Soichiro Honda’s finest. But crucially, HPJ is also an excellent salesman as he not only can provide product training but also train Honda sales people to sell their cars better, more efficiently and more confidently.
We had the opportunity to spend time with Jason at an exclusive appreciation and farewell dinner hosted by Power Pets Philippines Inc., (whose owners Pao and Jen Balagtas are die-hard car enthusiasts who started out with Hondas, too) and while Jason was tired from all the various activities, he was kind, courteous, respectful and expressed extreme satisfaction and gratitude over his first Philippine visit, seeing that he connected with a very passionate and vibrant Filipino Honda custom car-culture community. He is excited to come back, spend more time and share more of his knowledge with the Filipino people. He noted that it was very easy for him to get comfortable because everybody spoke very good English, allowing him to communicate with and connect better with the Filipino Honda community.
Jason’s humble attitude and open-mindedness, as well as his cowboy and gung-ho attitude is a refreshing change from many entitled prima donna “influencers” and “content creators” who fail to give any useful positive contribution to the local automotive scene. They appear at events, demand appearance fees, require VIP status, travel to foreign trips and ask for special projects, test drive lend-outs and more. Their list of demands goes on for miles. And yet, many of them fail to deliver any useful, meaningful or helpful content that contribute to anyone, aside from glorifying themselves on social media with their cringe-worthy vanity. It’s high time the brands called out these people who give legitimate media outlets and content creators that work hard to deliver quality useful content, a very bad name.
Aside from HPJ, Hisaaki Murakami from J’s Racing Japan came over. Hisaaki-san is a frequent guest here in the Philippines and also wanted to meet HPJ in Manila. We also had content creators fly in from neighboring Malaysia who were equally impressed with the quality of the local Honda builds and the overall car scene. We now have a standing invitation for them to visit Manila again and cover more of our car builds and events, and they have also invited us to visit Malaysia to cover their events which have reached the global stage quite earlier than ours have had.
We need these foreign guests. Speaking to Lady Rio Soloria of Trap H Productions, they plan to bring in more big names in the international car community to highlight the local car culture scene and allow the Philippines to finally receive recognition on the global stage. Let’s also hope the OEMs support and embrace this opportunity to connect with their customers.
We can only doff our hats to to Honda Cars Philippines and Trap H Productions for such a big time collaboration that is beneficial to car owners.
