Meet the Expert: Dennis Perez on Turning Science Into Storytelling
From the lab to the boardroom, Dennis Perez shows how understanding molecules—and mindsets—can transform how we market beauty.
The story begins in the lab for Dennis Perez.
In the requisite white gown, amidst flasks and beakers, Unilever’s Philippine head of marketing, and marketing transformation lead in Greater Asia for beauty and well-being started his career creating the products that the personal care giant would eventually release.
“I was a formulator,” he recalls fondly. “My office was the laboratory. I’d wear my lab gown, and start pulling out beakers and test tubes to formulate what our next skin or hair care product would be. I really enjoyed it.”
A chemical engineer by profession, Perez hails from a family of like-minded engineers and architects. Growing up, he witnessed his father and grandfather’s work, and naturally gravitated towards the chemical engineering course in the University of the Philippines. Perez would go on to create impactful products, such as Sunsilk shampoos made to deliver smoother hair, and a Cream Silk conditioner range with an anti-pollution property that repelled dirt and impurities, even getting assigned to Unilever’s regional technology center in Bangkok for a year.
But together with a proficiency in science and math that is, no doubt, inherited, Perez is also a storyteller at heart. “When I was a kid, I liked writing,” he says. “In high school, I became a film buff, and even in college, in UP, while taking engineering, I took units in film as an elective.”
Deep inside, he shares, he knew the artist who loved stories existed.
And as with all good stories, a good shake-up, a disturbing of the status quo took place. After five to six years inside the lab, Perez made the leap to marketing. When asked how it happened, he smiles and says, “Oh, this is an interesting story.”
“Part of my job [in research and development],” he explains, “was helping tell product stories in more convincing ways. As a formulator and chemical engineer, I knew what went inside the bottle.” Perez worked together with the marketing team, as well as advertising agencies, and found himself reviewing every single storyboard.
“There was a meeting where I needed to comment on the product portion of the ad, but I ended up commenting on the narrative,” he recalls. “The marketing director said, ‘Hey, it looks like you can do marketing. Why don’t you try it for six months? If you don’t like it, you can go back to R&D.’ I never went back.”
From working within the confines of the lab, an entire world of experiences was now Perez’s playground. For him, marketing is all about making complicated concepts easy to digest—a challenge that involves tapping into the language of the times, and the flow of culture. “Culture, I would say, is actually the secret sauce,” Perez shares, “because culture is the vehicle for anything complex to be understood better.”
It’s an interesting intersection that Perez inhabits, where the worlds of science and art collide. The perspective he offers is not very common: the trained eyes of a chemical engineer using his expertise to help others understand the science behind everyday products. But instead of thinking of his situation in terms of a battle between the left and right sides of his brain, Perez thinks there are more similarities, rather than differences.
Dookie Ducay
“A formulator, a scientist, will not be able to create a product without understanding what the target consumer needs,” he explains. “In R&D, I worked in the lab, but I also spent time outside talking to people, asking ‘Do you want your hair straight? What kind of straight?’ You need to understand that in order to create the right product. A marketer does that as well—understand what people want and need.”
His background as a formulator, then, is an advantage—especially in today’s world where the regular consumer is so informed and connected, with all sorts of information available with a click or swipe.
It’s on social media, Perez shares, that people discover products nowadays. “We have what we call social proof, which is letting people review the products we bring out, and it’s become a very important element in marketing,” he explains. Science-led marketing, he says, becomes an imperative when you let people talk about your products. “Consumers are now more knowledgeable, so it’s very important that your products are backed by real science that people can understand. That’s how you build trust now.”
It’s a welcome shift from Perez’s days in the lab, when only he and his colleagues understood terms like ceramides, hyaluron, and silicones. “As a person of science, I’m happy that we finally have the same vocabulary when it comes to products,” he chuckles. The language of science, it seems, is one that is now spoken widely. And Perez, a man of science, but also a creative and a storyteller, is in the perfect spot to interpret it.
Art direction by Mikiyo Ricamora. Grooming by Cats del Rosario. Styling by Ton Lao, assisted by Mel Calmante. Photographer’s assistants: Jay Artales and Lou Fajardo.
