The Campaign

The Philippine media landscape is very complex because of both the already cluttered traditional media, and the influx of digital media. Traditional media is still used mostly as a one-way push of branded content, as opposed to digital media, where there is an opportunity for a two-way conversation, creating a linkage between user and brand generated content. With the rise in media, different target markets are now able to choose and consume different types of media based on their needs (i.e. Teens consume more digital media due to their need of belonging and not wanting to be left out of trends and new things). Moreover, consumers are exposed to a lot more information now thereby making engagement more difficult and clear brand messaging even more important. Consumers also easily tune out of branded content therefore choosing a relevant channel with an authentic brand voice is crucial.

Results

Eskinol is the leader in Deep Cleansers with 40% share. However, in the past years, more teens have lapsed out of the category, causing brand decline, despite pimples being the no.1 problem for teens. Clearly, Eskinol needed to regain relevance as the best solution to their pimple problems, in a way that was authentic and talkable for its hard-to-catch, hard-to-please teens. Teens hardly watch traditional media. They have fleeting attention spans and tune out to messaging that is hard-sell. So educating them about Eskinol's pimple-fighting properties was doubly hard. We knew that selecting the right channel and crafting the right message was critical. Eskinol partnered with Wattpad, the world’s largest e-book community, with 75M stories, 100M reads, and a huge following of 4M users in the Philippines, largely teens. Our idea was simple: to co-create the first ever e-book about teen life and teen problems... including pimples! giving birth to Eskinol Face the Day, the first-ever branded co-created Wattpad campaign in the world! Eskinol Face the Day is a 9-chapter online story that follows the life of Patricia, a plain jane new student, and her journey of finding confidence, friends, and love. As she experiences all the stresses of teen life (pimples included!), she learned that with the help of friends (and Eskinol), you can get the confidence to make true love happen. There was such a huge clamor for the story that in less than a month, we were communicating to 150,000 teens! Readers would actively discuss each chapter sharing their how they can relate to the character and how Eskinol can help with their dilemmas too. To maximize reach, we decided to bring this to Youtube by creating a 3-part web-novela. It became an instant hit with 2.5 million teens eagerly awaiting each episode weekly.

There was very high quality of engagement amongst our teen audience with 70% of comments in the online story talking about pimples and the brand. They talk about how Eskinol has boosted their confidence in current life situations, how effective Eskinol is and that they appreciated the pimple remedy beauty tips given out after every chapter. Some notable comments were “Eskinol is really a lifesaver for pimples”, “I am pimple free with Eskinol”, and “I am currently using Eskinol and guess what, my pimples are slowly going away!”.

Eskinol Face The Day story generated about 143,093 reads, with multiple comments on brand love. The 3-part web episode generated about 20M impressions and 2.5M views on Youtube, with an organic reach double the industry average. In Facebook, we reached about 5.3M teens, with a high CTR of 5% vs benchmark at 0.3%. Brand sales turned around from a -6% decline in 2013 to a high growth YTD of 14%. From 40% share in 2013, Eskinol is now at its highest share at 44%. Brand saliency experienced a significant uplift and now owns attributes on ‘clear acne and pimple effectively’.

Eskinol Face the Day the first commissioned story by a Personal Care Brand in the world. It is also the first commissioned story in Asia and in the Philippines. It is a story about Patricia, a plain jane new student, and her journey of finding confidence amidst school stress and pimple problems, meeting new friends, and experiencing her first love. Eskinol was subtly injected in the story through seamless product intrusions as well as providing Eskinol beauty tips at the end of each chapter. We also made sure to leverage on Julia Montes, Eskinol’s celebrity brand ambassador, to ensure that brand linkage remains strong.