Background

Despite being the number one face care brand in the Philippines, Pond’s has been struggling on improving its relevance in the face care category due to the disruption of small and big players with faster innovation churn. To help maintain the brand’s relevance, Pond’s is undergoing a transformation with a stronger focus on democratizing beauty trends by offering a fun beauty experience. Pond’s aims to create bigness on being one of the top-of-mind skin care of the consumers by leveraging in-app chatbot and helping consumers gain a deeper understanding of their skin type and matching them with the most effective products. With this chatbot, consumers can have a smarter skincare shopping experience. Pond’s aims to be one of the top personal care brands by staying relevant and accessible to a new generation of consumers in the ever-evolving landscape.

Describe the creative idea

SKIN CARE PRODUCTS WORK BEST IF YOU KNOW YOUR SKIN TYPE, AND LOCKDOWNS MADE IT DIFFICULT FOR FILIPINAS TO ASSESS THEIR SKIN TYPE AND CONDITION Pre-pandemic, it was easier for consumers to seek beauty and skin advice from experts on-ground whenever they have questions about their skin. As it was key for beauty-savvy Filipinas to first figure out their skin type before purchasing skincare products, lockdowns and restricted mobility made it hard for them to get consultations and a proper skin assessment. Recognizing this struggle, POND’S launched an innovative solution called the Pond’s Skin Advisor Live (SAL), an AI-powered skincare diagnostic tool built on AI-designed Conversational Bot augmented with human interaction. The tool was based on dermatologist graded data and consumer’s selfies to recommend the right skincare regimen, which is a service usually offered in-store with the help of sales & category experts or personal dermatologists.

Describe the strategy

REVOLUTIONIZING BEAUTY ADVISORY WITH AI AND CREATING A SEAMLESS CONSUMER BUYING JOURNEY The Pond’s SAL is built around three key premises: 1/ An AI-designed chatbot that revolutionizes beauty advisory experience with AI 2/ AI-Powered Skin Analysis: it has deep learning technology that analyzes skin condition for personalized skin insights 3/ #BeautifulYouSimulation: clinical progression data helps in simulate the consumers’ optimal skin care look Apart from analyzing the skin, SAL also contains on-trend, fit-to-mobile skincare content produced by influencers and the POND’S Institute. Apart from just consultations, Pond’s took it a step further to make shopping easier: partnering with Shopee, it wanted to a provide a seamless buying experience in just three easy steps: CHAT, SNAP & BUY. With this, consumers gain a deeper understanding of their skin and shop the most effective skincare products directly from their homes, providing a one-stop beauty solution and a smarter and seamless shopping experience.

Describe the execution

Pond’s first launched SAL on Facebook; the brand deployed multiple assets to test if optimizing different IG Stories would lead to a better direct response across engagement, messaging, and purchase. With the success of Facebook, Pond’s then launched SAL within Shopee. By simply taking a selfie, the AI-tool would assess the face and help Filipinas determine the type of skin they have, then recommend the Pond’s product that would best go with their skin, making shopping easier and providing a seamless experience in easy steps: 1. CHAT 2. SNAP (a selfie) 3. BUY Pond’s deployed multiple assets to promote and drive purchase: • Facebook conversion using Collection Ad, Static, and Instagram Story • Branded Content Collab Ads • Tapped celebrities and influencers to teach how to use the chatbot and encourage purchase • Facebook In-stream optimized for conversion • Long-form video to educate consumers about the chatbot optimized for conversion

List the results

POND’S partnership achieved remarkable results: • FB Messenger: 385% incremental purchase, 63% conversion rate vs. 6.89% benchmark. • Shopee: 100% achieved vs. 2M GMV Target, Pond’s contribution to total Unilever Beauty and Personal Care • 163% achieved (5.7M vs. 3.5M target) significantly higher from the start of Super Brand Day and sustained post-campaign. • Conversion rate with SAL was at 18% vs. PDP at only 3%. • 120K+ product content views, a whopping 1120% achievement vs. planned • 212% achieved conversion vs. planned • 39% sales attributed to SAL • SAL Super Brand Day drove 13x gross merch value (vs. pre-campaign) • POND’S Shopee ranking also increased to #5 and #1 in Unilever Beauty and Personal Care • Among the other 3 markets (Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam) that launched SAL in Shopee, the Philippines had the highest conversion rate (vs. PDP journey) 7.4x vs. 1.3x average of the 3 markets.