From being the brightest star in the political constellation—when she backed up the candidacy of sitting president Ferdinand Marcos Jr.—Toni Gonzaga’s star has since been dimming fast through no fault of her own.
Going back to election day, what made Toni a controversial figure is when she posted that she is raring for her candidate to return to his family’s house in Malacanang, which netizens found repulsive and brought back memories of the dark past of Martial Law, under the rein of Marcos Sr.
When Shoppee, the popular ecommerce company, which operates strongest in Singapore, decided to get Gonzaga as its brand ambassador for November 10—but which was preceded by an announcement that it was laying off riders and employees—the backlash was so thunderous—retailers left the brand for its rival, Lazada and online consumers called for a boycott of a company that preferred to pay millions of pesos for one endorser over the welfare of its employees and riders, who have several families to support.
When sales dropped substantially, the company—though not outrightly admitting it—decided to drop Gonzaga for its Christmas edition returning instead Jose Mari Chan, whose Christmas songs/albums dominate the airwaves and private homes every Christmas.
Then ALLTV of tycoon, Manny Villar pirated her along with Willie Revillame and other talents from GMA, ABS-CBN and TV-5, only to drop them all after a few months of airing when ads and subscribers did not rise, as it expected. Many blamed it to the ongoing boycott of Gonzaga (who along with husband are actively supporting and unofficially accompanying Marcos Jr. in foreign travels, which taxpayers lament they pay for.
And when she held a concert at the Araneta Coliseum, which papers friendly to her said was jampacked but which others said was half full because of the tickets (paid by some LGUs and administration supporters0 given for free. Still the Coliseum saw a lot of vacant spaces that could easily be half its capacity.”Nilangaw” said the usual comments on FB about her concert.
Although Marcos’ following is nearly unchanged, disappointments and frustrations towards his leadership have been flooding Twitter and Facebook, and as to whether this has bearing with Gonzaga, no one has yet measured the effect on her popularity and vice versa.
Add to the dimming stars of Toni is the faux pas of her sister, Alex in the cake smearing incident and her habitual tardiness in shooting schedules, as relayed to the public by fellow actress Dina Bonnevie. Some netizens are ascribing bad breeding to the Gonzaga family, why these girls behave the way they do.
When Shoppee announced Toni as its ambassador in September, netizens threatened to boycott and uninstall their Shopee apps on their phones using the trending hashtags #ByeShopee and #BoycottShopee with about 340,000 tweets on September 30 together with topics Shopee, Lazada, and Toni.
However, this kind of ‘cancel culture’ and boycotting has a negative impact on sellers who are just trying to make a living.
Website Bilyonaryo reported on October 18 that sellers saw a significant decline in sales following the backlash even during their monthly sales like 10.10 which are usually ‘blockbusters’.
Sellers were quoted saying “Grabe ang tumal” with one particular seller claiming that this is the first time that this happened in her 4 years as a Shopee seller.
Shoppee, globally, had been laying off all year long, said Sea Ltd., the company handling Shopee. In just a span of six months, Sea Ltd has laid off more than 10 percent of its workforce or 7,000 employees, Reuters reported.
Companies have been making deep cuts on its employee base as part of restructuring efforts to navigate a potential downturn in the economy.
In the Philippines, Shopee erred in confirming the lay off of some employees two days before announcing Gonzaga as its brand ambassador, reported Inquirerdotnet.