The fresh faces of confidence

Marvin Simon Sia and Teresa Paron, two big winners on the Trip Kita adventure-reality show produced by ABS-CBN 2 and Colgate Fresh Confidence, are blessed with natural charm. The unique model search-cum-game show yielded a treasure trove of talented teeners and Marvin and Teresa proved to be the best in the bunch, the crème de la crème.

Just what was Colgate Fresh Confidence looking for in mounting Trip Kita?

"We were searching for youthful, confident, fresh faces who would best represent the Colgate Fresh Confidence lifestyle," explains Gabbi Ledesma, account manager of Dentsu, Young, and Rubicam, which handles the Colgate Fresh Confidence brand. The future faces of Colgate Fresh Confidence, Gabbi points out, should possess "distinct personalities. They should be at ease with themselves. They should be interesting enough to be able to stand out from among the pack."

Needless to say, Marvin and Teresa did a superb job, excelling and shining from among 55 aspirants. It could very well be because of their distinctive, "fresh and confident" personalities. Marvin and Teresa are not only easy to look at, they also exude the elusive X factor, an electrifying presence that goes beyond physical allure.

Truth be told: Marvin and Teresa, both 18 years young, are equally accomplished for people their age. Teresa has tucked numerous commercials under her belt, including ads for a telecommunications giant, a rice cooker company, as well as for a donut store and a biscuit brand. The pert and perky young miss, in fact, has been modeling ever since she started walking and talking, believe it or not!

"I was only two when I first posed for the print ad of the old department store Syvel’s in Cubao," Teresa recalls. A modeling veteran, Teresa, however, was able to combine her schooling and lucrative pastime with relative ease. "It’s all about time management," she reveals her secret.

Case in point: For their first Colgate Fresh Confidence pictorial, Teresa arrived at the studio, straight from school, still wearing her starched white nursing student uniform. (She’s a sophomore at the UERM).

"I usually have classes in the morning until early afternoon," she elaborates. "That’s why I usually set my work appointments in the late afternoon or early evening." She also lugs along her school books, assignments and projects to her workplace. "In the dressing room or on the set, while waiting for my turn, I study for my exams. I review my notes."

The conscientious student dreams of becoming a doctor, after finishing her nursing course. Studying medicine was a promise she made on the sickbed of her late father when she was only nine. "He was already ill then," Teresa recalls. "So I told him I would study to become a doctor someday so I could take care of him and cure him when I grow up." In fact, she is allocating part of her Trip Kita winnings for her studies.

Although a level-headed girl, Teresa also knows how to have fun once in a while. "I go malling with friends," she chimes in. "But I’m not yet allowed to go out on dates, to go on gimiks at night." Embarking on the Trip Kita expedition, she beams, allowed her to go on a grand gimik, to explore places she hasn’t visited before (It also challenged her to do things she hasn’t tried before, like eating raw sea urchin and tamilok or worm in Palawan and fresh squid, shrimp, and oyster in Boracay). "The show allowed me to see just how beautiful and rich in natural resources our country is," Teresa pipes in.

The same sentiment is expressed by Marvin Simon Sia, who shyly admits he spent more family vacations abroad than in his own country, until Trip Kita came along. "I’ve never gone around the country before," he affirms. So the Trip Kita adventure served a dual purpose for Marvin – it was both for business and for pleasure.

"We were working tourists, if that is at all possible," he volunteers. "I joined the show because I wasn’t doing anything last summer. The advanced subjects I wanted to take were not available."

Marvin, also a sophomore taking up Management Economics at the Ateneo, is the type of guy who values his time immensely. Like most young men of his generation, he is adept at multi-tasking and making productive use of his time. He admits being a stickler for competence and productivity. "I’m conscious of the efficiency of every hour, every minute. I hate just sitting idly or lying in bed, doing nothing." For the long waits at work, he usually brings along a book to while away the time. For the Colgate Fresh Confidence pictorial, he was browsing through an old pocketbook, How to Invest Your Money and Profit from Inflation by Morton Schulman. He concedes he is re-reading the book for helpful insights it could provide, especially after winning the P1-M prize on Trip Kita. The portrait that forms in the mind is that an exceptionally motivated young man.

This early, he has his entire future mapped out in front of him. After clinching his bachelor’s degree, he plans to work for a couple of years before taking his master’s degree. Then, he would go back to the corporate world before earning his PhD.

Indeed, Marvin, like Teresa, is one young person who maximizes his potentials, his blessings to the fullest. After all, Marvin is the same guy who appears on a TV ad for a popular film brand that capitalizes on his striking resemblance to Vaness Wu of the Taiwanese pop sensation F4. "When I was in Boracay, an old lady kept asking me if I was Vaness," he recounts. He didn’t have the heart to disappoint her. "At least, I was able to make her happy even for a brief moment." That was grace under extreme pressure.

These were precisely the traits they were looking for in the Colgate Fresh Confidence tandem, according to Gabbi. "Like in all things in life, you need a lot of self-assurance to achieve something worthwhile," Gabbi intones.

And Teresa and Marvin exemplify the best of their generation: fresh, confident, feisty and charismatic.