In the Philippines, the Beauty and Personal Care (BPC) category has been growing faster versus previous years, with Pond's being a top care brand. Despite being one of the key market leaders for BPC, Pond's continued to struggle with its brand equity among consumers. With the rise of new and small players in the market, together with its inconsistent brand messaging, Pond's was faced with the challenge of staying relevant and connecting with the target audience on an emotional level.
Pond's audience was millennials and generation Z, whom, the brand knew, had a propensity to be highly engaged with social media. Pond's wanted to reach this audience with a campaign that would increase brand awareness and favorability. This campaign would reflect Pond's advocacy — specifically, the encouragement it offered women to #SeeWhatHappens when they face their insecurities.
Objective and Context:
Pond's has long been an advocate of embracing beauty, and in particular of accepting one's own beauty and embracing the modern Filipina.
What made the 2019 purpose campaign different was the seamless inclusion of digital and social media during a live event. The brand took the opportunity to pilot new features from Facebook (e.g., video polls and live polls) and leveraged existing branding opportunities on Twitter (e.g., branded hashtags and sponsored trends).
With this, the brand was able to amplify the event and allow it to be more inclusive so that anyone could join in on the conversation.
Target Audience:
The campaign aimed to speak to young Filipinas between the ages of 18 and 34, digital natives who were on their mobile phones an average of eight hours a day. For them, social media is a way of putting themselves out there, a mirror of themselves, a reflection of who they are.
These women are interested in beauty and in keeping themselves presentable and likeable in the eyes of their family and peers, whom they interact with on social media.
The brand found that when these Filipinas post a selfie, if it does not get any likes within the first five minutes, they delete it. This clearly shows how self-conscious women can be when they feel like they are not recognized or appreciated; simple engagement feels like a validation for them.
Creative Strategy:
Members of generation Z and millennials value sincerity and authenticity. They tend to favor brands that can give them inclusivity and those whom they feel are more personal to them. With this in mind, Pond's launched its newest campaign, "Face Your Hesitations and See What Happens."
Serving as an means to communicate its brand purpose, this campaign aimed to speak to its audience and show that it was a brand that could relate to the hesitations and struggles that Filipinas go through.
As a leader in the category, Pond's wanted to speak to its audience and show that it was a brand that could relate to the hesitations and struggles that Filipinas go through. Pond's decided to use social media in a different way: It redefined the role of social media and created real-time data-driven insights that helped define topics that would convey authenticity and sincerity to its consumers.
By utilizing some of the most-used digital platforms and successful influencers, Pond's made connecting with young Filipinas possible. The overall strategy was to use social media to land the campaign message and at the same time provide inclusivity and personalization through bespoke content and executions based on the audience's engagement and opinion.
Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter were the key platforms as these were the top sites that the target audience used. These were also high-engagement platforms where people often shared and contributed to conversations that honed opinions.
Facebook and Twitter polls captured thoughts about the audience's main hesitations, such as moving out of their parents' home and reactions to compliments, which enabled Ponds to pinpoint exactly what the target audience's fears and insecurities were and allowed the brand to produce relevant content derived from these insights. Facebook Live polls conducted during the on-the-ground event were based on top celebrities' interview answers about their own hesitations, which conveyed relatability and drove conversations in the chatbox.
Creative was designed to be mobile-first and to be appealing to the audience through the use of emojis, endorser assets, and hashtags. Pond's also invited KOLs to share their own stories of hesitations and encouraged others to face them and see what happens.
Overall Campaign Execution:
Pond's aimed to target young Filipinas — the highly social millennials, and tech-savvy members of generation Z — who frequented social media apps. With these aims in mind, Pond's created a well-considered media budget. The brand allotted 95 percent of the budget to digital/social and five percent for TV for supplementary reach and media coverage during the live event.
The campaign was two-fold:
Mobile Execution:
To start, the brand released teasers and used this chance to not only talk to its consumers but also to deliver more consistent communications and messaging to the audience.
Prior to the big event, Pond's wanted to engage and interact with its consumers to get a feel for how Filipinas see and think of themselves by using Facebook Feed poll ads. Supporting this, polls were also placed on Instagram and Twitter, creating a multi-channel approach for the campaign.
To further strengthen the brand's purpose campaign, two films were released: a purpose-driven asset and a celebrity-centric one designed to increase consideration and favorability among viewers.
For the event, the Women Speak Forum, viewership both on-the-ground and online was synchronous as the event was being streamed live on Facebook. The brand pioneered the use of Facebook Live polls, allowing online viewers to interact and engage with the event even though they weren't physically present.
To sustain the campaign and drive home the brand purpose, native articles were deployed. And with the help of influencers posting on their social media accounts, fan bases found something to talk and interact about with each other.
Pond's is one of the most recognizable brands in the Philippines when it comes to beauty. The brand has been performing well in the past years, launching different product innovations that cater to the ever-changing beauty needs of its consumers.
As one of the leaders in the category, Pond's found out that there aren't any brands that are talking about beauty together with inner confidence, and Pond's wanted to change that. This campaign let the brand reach out to its audience on the very platform they are constantly present on and use it in a way to sincerely make a difference in their outlook on life.
The objectives of the campaign were fulfilled as:
Another impressive result was the click-through rate of 2.68 percent.
The campaign was successful in reaching out to young Filipinas and helped them face their hesitations.
With the main objective of strengthening brand proposition and changing brand perspective, the brand increased total ad recall by 4.1 points, its brand attribute rating by 1.6 points, and brand favorability by 3.6 points. All of these gains helped in driving brand growth by 11 percent versus the previous year.
In addition to generating these results, the campaign also collected data during the live polls that enabled the creation of consumer segments; later on, these segments were retargeted with ads that strengthened Pond's key message.
