The Campaign

Face care in the Philippines has lost its relevance. Women use soap & baby powder because they believe their beauty is limited. Ponds realized if women think they can be more beautiful, they will start using face care products. This inspired the Pond’s #BeautifulStory campaign. Pond’s capitalized on 17 of the Philippines’ Most Beautiful Faces to demonstrate that beauty transformations are possible. Ponds gathered the 17 celebrities in one film on TV and in one PR launch. In digital, Pond’s created 17 shorts that reveal their transformation stories. In outdoor, we owned all top moving billboards in Metro Manila. The campaign became the most viewed campaign in 2014 with more than 1 Billion impressions online, reaching 15M Filipinas. It is the most engaged campaign with 1M USD worth of PR values and 100,000 responses. Pond’s Philippines achieved 22% growth, the highest in the world for the past 8 years.

Success of the Campaign

This campaign was a turnaround for Pond’s Philippines. It recorded 22% growth, the highest ever in the past 10 years in the Philippines and the highest ever across the world! Shares went back to the 2012 levels at 300 basis points cumulative increase. #BeautifulStory garnered 1 billion cumulative impressions across digital making it the most visible digital campaign for any face care brand in 2014. The videos became the most viewed on YouTube and Facebook when it reached 6 million viewers. Ponds got press coverage worth US$ 1 Million with presence in magazines and newspapers, and online via bloggers. This translates to an ROI of more than 400%. There were 100,000 cumulative engagements by the audience on digital via likes, comments and shares and more than 10,000 Beautiful Stories were shared online by women who were inspired by the campaign.

Describe how the campaign/entry was launched and executed across each channel in the order of implementation.

The #BeautifulStory campaign broke with a mega event, launching 17 beautiful celebrities. This aired live across 10 television networks & made Breaking News. The campaign kicked off via a 30sec teaser TVC, featuring 4 women who represent the different Pond’s platforms, at 1,000 GRPS/week, the highest in the face category. This was complemented with 1-day page takeovers in digital channels like Cosmo.ph, PEP.ph and Yahoo. The official launch kicked-off with a 7-channel roadblock on TV and digital. A 10-minute segment #BeautifulStory was aired on a top-rated Sunday variety show. Pond’s released weekly #BeautifulStory videos online, revealing celebrities’ behind the scenes transformations. Women responded by sharing their #BeautifulStories, revealing that the campaign was hitting the right chords. Magazines reinforced Pond’s image as a leader in beauty. Top tier beauty magazines featured #PondsGirls and carried the #BeautifulStory inside. Multiple covers, a first time creative execution in the Philippines, resonated and drove visibility.

The face care market in the Philippines has lost its relevance over a period of time. Whilst the ‘face’ is still considered to be the benchmark for beauty, only 50% of women use a product specific for the face. 80% of Filipinas want to have fairer skin, but usage of face care whitening products is low with a penetration of 36%. This is primarily because women have hit a glass ceiling when questioned on beauty and typically respond “hanggang dito nalang ang igaganda ko,” (translated into “this is as beautiful as I can get’.) Filipino women believe that their basic regimen of using soap and baby powder is enough. Pond’s, as the market leader in face care, aims to change this mindset and make face care relevant again by communicating that you have the potential to look more beautiful with the use of the right beauty product like Pond’s.