HBO Max creates global stories, but our role in each market is to make them feel local. For HBO Max Philippines, that means creating content that speaks directly to Filipino audiences, not just reposting global assets.
When a Filipino character sang a Hiligaynon lullaby in The Pitt Season 2 Episode 7, we recognized it as a uniquely Filipino moment within an international show. Instead of translating it for broader appeal, we kept the original Hiligaynon lyrics and paired it with the caption “Dr. Santos pa ba?” (of course, it had to be Dr. Santos), a line that only Filipino viewers would fully understand.
Our goal was to create hyper-local content that felt made for the Philippines. We wanted to spark national pride, drive organic conversation, and show that HBO Max Philippines understands the nuances of its culture.
This was not just about promoting a show. It was about proving that when global content is handled with local insight, it resonates more deeply and travels further.
The traditional Hiligaynon lullaby that Dr. Santos performs is Ili-Ili, Tulog Anay, a Visayan song typically sung by a caregiver to a child, referencing a mother who is away to buy bread.
Seeing the moment in a preview screener, we immediately identified this as an opportunity for one of HBO Max’s flagship series to resonate deeply with our Filipino subscribers, tapping on the national love for singalongs and national pride.
Our editorial team proceeded to isolate the scene, subtitling it in Hiligaynon (a Visayan dialect) without translation, then posting it on our Filipino TikTok handle @hbomaxph when the episode was released for streaming to create excitement for Filipinos around the series with a karaoke-able format that felt more like organic content than a simple reposting of a global asset.
This post resulted in one of our most viewed pieces of content to date, quickly garnering over 1.3M Views, 171.5K Likes and strong engagement in the comments with over 500 Comments where viewers reminisced while educating a wider global audience about their proud Filipino heritage.
