I REMEBER seeing Robin Padilla walking hand in hand with a lovely pregnant teenager in the 1990s outside a convenience store in Hong Kong. That girl was Liezel Sicangco.
Last week I interviewed Kylie Padilla, the second daughter of Robin and Liezel. Kylie, the new endorser of Watsons’s Switch & Save campaign, is pregnant with her first child. She is as lovely as her mother and very articulate.
We asked her about her beauty secrets.
“After working, I make sure to take off all my makeup. The vitamins are doing their job. I sleep early also, and I drink lots of water. I also use Bio-Oil for the stretch marks,” Kylie said during the media launch for the new Watsons’s Switch and Save TVC featuring her and the other five endorsers, including Christian Bautista, Tessa Prieto-Valdes, Iya Villania-Arellano, Edu Manzano and Lorna Tolentino.
Kylie is actually a good makeup artist who learned tips and tricks from YouTube. She also has her own YouTube channel (on hiatus right now). For the media launch, she did her own makeup. We asked her to share a beauty tip and Kylie said women should not use eyebrow products that are too dark because they can make you look harsh.
Kylie also disclosed that her mom Liezel didn’t get mad when she became pregnant. But she was angry that Kylie and her boyfriend, actor Aljur Abrenica, aren’t getting married.
“She even gave me advice about breast-feeding. She only breast-fed me for a couple of months, because I was born via caesarian section. So she said I should give birth normally and breast-feed my baby for at least a year,” Kylie said. Tessa Prieto-Valdes is part of the original group of Watsons’s Switch & Save endorsers.
“The campaign was launched in 2012 to show smart shoppers how to save on their personal-care essentials by shifting to the Watsons brand in order to afford more of the things they really want,” said Viki Encarnacion, Watsons Philippines marketing director.
Watsons customers made the switch, changing their toothbrushes, tissues, hand soaps, lotions and more for the affordable, high-quality Watsons alternative. Eventually, the Switch & Save campaign was expanded to the pharmacy with the launch of Watsons Generics in 2014.
To emphasize that “cheaper doesn’t mean lower quality”, the Watsons team launched The Switch Test. Basically, this is an in-store activity that asked shoppers to compare Watsons to the leading brands. The tests are blind, with customers being asked to try two products and choose the one they would rather buy. From body scrubs to hair irons, shoppers felt their way through the Watsons selection.
Eight out of 10 shoppers chose the Watsons Label product over the leading branded counterpart. When informed of the savings they could get with Watsons Label, the remaining shoppers, who at first chose the leading brands, were also convinced to make the switch. With results like these, the Watsons team knew that it was on to something big. The next challenge was to bring the same experience to more people.
The Watsons team ran the same blind test on its six celebrity endorsers. The verdict? Watsons products matched the quality of items from more expensive brands. What’s the difference between these two products? If you switch to Watsons, you can save up to 80 percent.
At the Switch and Save event, Watsons organized Switcher’s Feud, a Family Feud-style contest between two teams. Each team had one celebrity endorser and two members of the media. The game’s top 5 answers per question were taken from a survey among 100 people on buying behavior related to personal-care products and medicine. The game was as informative as it was entertaining.