PONDS FACE MY LOVE

TitlePONDS FACE MY LOVE
BrandUNILEVER
Product / ServiceFACIAL WASH
CategoryA01. Best Fictional Program, Series or Film where a client has successfully created a drama, comedy or miniseries around a product or brand
EntrantOGILVYONE WORLDWIDE Manila, THE PHILIPPINES
Entrant Company OGILVYONE WORLDWIDE Manila, THE PHILIPPINES
Contributing Company OGILVYONE WORLDWIDE Manila, THE PHILIPPINES
Contributing Company 2 LOUDBOX STUDIOS Makati City, THE PHILIPPINES
Production Company WHISK PRODUCTIONS Makati City, THE PHILIPPINES

Credits

Name Company Position
Dhang Santiago Asst. Broadcast Producer
Wishnie Torres Redworks Manila Broadcast Producer
Maffy Tamayo Ogilvyone Worldwide Manila Senior Account Manager
Gelo Guerrero Ogilvyone Worldwide Manila Client Service Director
Andrea Santos Account Director
Arianne Catacutan Ogilvyone Worldwide Manila Account Manager
Bonnie Doroy Associate Creative Director
Chandra Marasigan Copywriter
Chi Roque Ogilvyone Worldwide Manila Art Director
Mike Sicam Ogilvyone Worldwide Manila Creative Director

The Campaign

Traditional advertising has been slowly declining in effectiveness in reaching the teenage market. As such, there has been a rise in Branded Entertainment in the Philippines in the hopes of getting this elusive group to listen to brand. However, Branded Entertainment in the Philippines has normally favored Brand over Entertainment. Few take into consideration what their audience wants to listen to. Most can be categorized as TVCs placed in digital channels. Hence, they are ignored just as easily. The few Branded Entertainment pieces that have been successful locally were truly emotional ones that targeted the general public, taking advantage of social issues to get their viewership. These though have mostly been one offs. Few have maximized the digital space to launch a piece of Branded Entertainment that specifically talks to teens. A branded series has yet to be explored, even though most teens already go online to watch their tv shows. Integration with social networks and use of video annotations are not usually done, even though teens normally juggle more than one screen online. Most Branded Entertainment videos in the Philippines are not supported this way.

Results

In 2012, Pond’s facial wash business in the Philippines was no longer growning. Traditional ads teaching teens to use facial wash instead of body soap were not working. To educate girls about facial wash, we took inspiration from a fanatical trend among Filipina teens: Korean soap operas, and wove our tutorial into an original web drama called ‘Face My Love’. We stayed true to the genre and promoted it like a Korean drama. KPop groups were tapped to spread it. The experience extended to Twitter where fans interacted with the characters in between episodes. We culminated with a Fans Day.

To educate teen girls about proper face care, we needed to speak their language. A web series was created based on teens’ fanaticism of Korean Pop Culture. The plan was to wrap our facial wash tutorial within the context of a story that girls would love to share with their peers. We partnered with KPop fan clubs to promote our videos to their networks. Display ads were placed on popular KPop websites. A YouTube search strategy was employed based on teen interests. We also invited viewers to follow the story via Twitter, where the story continued in between episodes.

There are three sets of metrics that mark the success of this campaign. First, the business impact for the Pond’s facial wash range. After the campaign, sales revenue posted a double-digit growth of +20% vs prior month (July 2012 vs June 2012). The second set point to the effectiveness of the web series in educating teen girls. From a survey conducted, 86% of those who watched the webisodes indicated they would use facial wash in cleaning their face. During the series, visits to Pond’s website facial wash section increased by 794%. Third is the effective use of social media to get girls to spread the edutainment content to their peers. The 3-part series earned over three milion views in just three weeks. At one point, all 3 episodes were on YouTube’s most watched videos. Thousands of likes, comments and shares allowed us to reach 5.6 million users – 75% of the total female teen target online. The Pond’s YouTube channel subscribers subsequently grew 23 times the original number, allowing us to contact these teens in the future. Through this web series, Pond’s was able to earn total values amounting to Php 23 million – ten times the project investment.