by c. mendez legaspi
For all her sins, imagined and admitted, Kris Aquino is still a most effective endorser. From Bench to Leonardo, San Miguel Beer to San-San Cosmetics, Kris attracts the widest demographic. Hardly surprising, since she is a woman who has been in the national consciousness for as long as we can remember.
For a local cosmetics and beauty retail player to entrust its image to Kris is a masterstroke of genius. When Asianovellas are still the rage, her strikingly Oriental looks appeal to a lot of people. "When we we’re brainstorming on who among women in show business has a colorful life, with a balanced and healthy lifestyle and who embodies the empowered Filipina, Kris’s name came out on top," reveals Beverly Valenzuela, San-San’s brand manager.
With a high-profile personality waving its banner, HBC (standing for Home of Beauty Exclusives from the former Hortaleza Beauty Center) is aggressively pushing for supremacy in the Pinay’s health and beauty regimen. With a full range of products that include a two-way cake foundation, pressed powder, lipsticks, eye shadows, eye pencils, concealers and liquid bases, San San is poised to become a viable choice of cosmetics for Filipino women looking for both quality and value for money. The brand is targeted at a wide range of consumers, from yuppies and professionals to young moms, and offers all the usual add-ons like vitamins and SPFs.
Associating the brand with a colorful personality like Kris Aquino’s is a brilliant strategy. The advertising’s showbiz aplomb has immediate appeal to the mass market—there’s a San San for every woman’s whim and fancy; if they want to go dramatic like when Kris does in Hiram, or go bubbly and energetic like in Pilipinas, Game KNB?, or perhaps go intimate and inquisitive like The Buzz, a woman beautified by San-San can have all her moods covered.
Clearly, Filipino women agree. After Kris came out made up by San-San, sales grew by 67 percent.
HBC has grown from strength to strength since it decided to go "upmarket" in 2000, transforming the neighborhood Hortaleza vaciador to a beauty emporium where consumers can go for great beauty products. From simple beauty retailing, it has introduced its own lines, including scrubs, goat’s milk products and shampoos (like its lemon shampoo). San San has been in HBC’s product range—and has been well-regarded by knowing beauty junkies—long before Kris Aquino catapulted the brand to beauty stardom.
Among HBC’s beauty exclusives are Body Recipe (total wellness), Hortaleza Professionals (haircare and nailcare for salons), Hortaleza, MD (dermatological soaps), Just BUG (fragrance), OHM (hygiene for men) and Vitasoft (for kids), among other increasingly household names in beauty.
"We want to make consumers feel important, to let them experience how it is to be pampered," says Valenzuela. By this she means that HBC will become increasingly accessible to everyone, "within reach of the customer’s pockets; the vicinity she is in and her beauty and relaxing needs.
"Every woman has a right to be beautiful, and she can attain that at affordable rates using San-San and other beauty exclusives from HBC."
Yes, it’s Filipino entrepreneurship and excellence again at work. And, with a little push from Kris, HBC may well find itself the premier beauty haven in the country in no time.
