You see them on billboards, watch them on TV, hear them on radio and read their print ads. They fill all the spaces around us, and yes, they even fill our consciousness. But who really are the top stars when it comes to celebrity endorsements?
Kris Aquino gets the biggest income from endorsements. Sharon Cuneta and Aga
Muhlach have the highest asking price per product endorsed. Marian Rivera and Judy Ann Santos have the biggest number of endorsement deals. KC Concepcion asks for the highest talent fee among the stars.
So reports Jo-Ann Q, Maglipon, the iconic editor in chief of Yes!, the top entertainment magazine in the country, that mag which has brought showbiz reporting to such levels of excellence and integrity, that even CEOs and socialites buy Yes!
“We picked the brains of account executives, entrepreneurs and marketing execs,”says Jo-Ann, and after in-depth research, she came up with this Top 20 Endorsers list with matching explanations:
1. Kris Aquino — “She is a fave of advertisers because she is very professional, and easy to work with. She arrives on the shoot prepared, with her lines memorized. Kris is the daughter of a past president and a national martyr ... Kris is seen as honest, and honesty is a very big advantage in advertising.”
2. Sharon Cuneta — “She is worth every centavo you pay, because of her masa appeal and her years of building up her wholesome image.”
3. KC Concepcion — “She is beautiful, wholesome, with a college degree from a foreign country, and she’s Sharon’s daughter.” Enough said.
3. and Marian Rivera — “Yong character niya is very engaging... Ang ganda-ganda niya.”
4. Aga Muhlach — “Aga represents the wholesome package: the gentleman who keeps mum when it comes to controversies; the boy next door that a girl would like to bring home for dinner; the nice type who is well-scrubbed.”
5. Piolo Pascual — “No doubt, Piolo’s good looks alone are enough to move an audience to patronize the products he speaks for.”
The other top endorsers are 6. Judy Ann Santos, 7. Vilma Santos, 8. Robin Padilla, 9. Richard Gutierrez and Maricel Soriano, 10. Dingdong Dantes, 11. Dawn Zulueta, 12. Lucy Torres-Gomez and Angel Locscin, 13. Manny Pacquiao, 14. Sarah Geronimo, 15. Lea Salonga, 16. Edu Manzano, 17. John Lloyd Cruz, 18. Toni Gonzaga, 19. Anne Curtis and 20. Ruffa Gutierrez.
To get the hot details and figures on these top 20 celebrity endorsers, get the October issue of Yes! And yes,we love this magazine. — Millet M. Mananquil
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The Bad Boy of Cuisine is here
It started as online chatter that finally burst forth from the lips of both bloggers and local foodies — who couldn’t contain themselves. Anthony Bourdain, the intrepid chef who travels the world in search of ever more exotic flavors, was spotted in Bacolod, shooting the Mardi Gras-like MassKara festival for his Discovery Travel & Living show, No Reservations.
Is Bourdain coming to your city, you ask, where your native delicacies are crying out for some global recognition? Never fear, my rabid foodies. Bacolod is just one of the stops on Bourdain’s tour of the Philippines: also on the menu are Cebu, where food blogger Marketman will show him around; Pampanga, which some of the Philippines’ best cooks call home and where he will be hosted by STAR columnists Claude and Mary Anne Tayag; and Manila, where he will likely sample our street food.
Having circled Southeast Asia and featured most of our ASEAN neighbors on his show, it was only a matter of time before Bourdain finally landed in the Philippines. This chef who considers himself more a cook earned a reputation as the Bad Boy of Cuisine from his memoir Kitchen Confidential, where he exposed unsavory restaurant practices like how the contents of uneaten breadbaskets are recycled from table to table.
No stranger to extreme cuisine himself, Bourdain has already tasted balut (in Vietnam, unfortunately. He found it “crunchy” and “delicious”). Let’s hope he finds many more Filipino dishes to champion and introduce to the world or, at the very least, finds our version of balut superior. —Therese Jamora-Garceau