Performance-driven Brand PR for Sephora.ph

Timeline: October-December 2019

Background

In a place where a bottle of shampoo costs as much as half the daily minimum wage, Manila's biggest highway street EDSA is plastered with billboards of cosmetic surgery ads, whitening creams, celebrity product testimonials, and designer clothing advertisements. As long as it is endorsed by their idols, consumers buy these products whether or not they are within financial reach (we have a total credit card debt of P157.394 billion for this reason) (Sison, 2015, on celebrity fanaticism in the Philippines).

The cult of celebrity to Philippine culture propels consumerism, noontime viewing habits, political inclinations, and the success of the millennial business model, across all ages, religions, and genders.

It is imperative for every makeup, skincare, and personal care brand to have a celebrity endorsement strategy in place in order to move the needle.

Problem

However, it has become difficult for e-commerce brands to get direct return on investment attribution to Celebrity PR campaigns as several channels play in the marketing mix. At the same time, such campaigns are always costly.

Solution

Getting the right person with the perfect hook and CTA is key.

With 4.9M followers on Instagram and 1.46M subscribers on Youtube, and editorial spread features on Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, among many others, Heart Evangelista is one of Asia’s most influential voices in fashion and beauty. She's able to deeply influence the affluent female audience, Sephora's primary target, as well as help raise awareness to the younger and more mass audience. Her presence only on online and not on mainstream platforms make her a good fit for Sephora.ph, an e-commerce only brand, both on brand and budget.

A makeup junkie herself, Sephora.ph partnered with her in creating social media content featuring our products. At the same time, we gave her a 12% discount promo code that she can share to her followers as a CTA.

Results

- 270% Return on investment, Sephora SEA's most effective influencer partnership, in terms of revenue generation

- 80% traffic uplift

- 25% uplift in new customer recruitment

- 100% boost in sales of products she promoted in the video

My role in the project

I managed the end to end promotional ideation and planning, project budget allocation and forecast, and execution of the project. I also created the post-mortem analysis that was included in best practices in the region.