Anyone who has driven along EDSA, Metro Manila's main highway, has seen them: giant Bench billboards above the Guadalupe bridge, often featuring the country's biggest stars or a visiting Korean actor. Bench, a homegrown lifestyle and fashion brand, has built its identity on celebrity marketing for nearly four decades. Using public information, this piece examines how it works.

1. From a T-shirt line to a retail group

Founder Ben Chan started Bench in 1987 as a men's T-shirt line, starting at a concession in SM Makati. "The opportunity gave me the idea to design a T-shirt and jeans line for men which became branded as Bench in 1987," he recalled. The parent company, Suyen Corporation, now runs more than 1,500 stores worldwide across 18 homegrown and 42 international brands, and employs more than 9,000 people.

Bench went abroad early. By 2002, it had stores in Guam and Saudi Arabia, serving overseas Filipinos, and opened a flagship in Shanghai. In October 2022, it opened a store in Okinawa, Japan.

2. Celebrities as the core of the brand

Bench's first image model, around its launch in the late 1980s, was actor Richard Gomez. Since then, the brand has worked with a long list of Filipino stars. Actress Kathryn Bernardo, for example, has been a Bench endorser since 2011. Chan has explained the logic simply: "Celebrity endorsement is important in terms of creating impact and achieving recall for the brand." He has also noted the risk: "The only limitation would be a tendency for the campaign to shift its focus more on the celebrity than the product."

3. Early to the Korean wave

Bench looked to Asian stars before most Philippine brands did. Its first foreign endorser came in 1995, Taiwanese actor Jerry Yan of Meteor Garden joined in 2003, and its first Korean endorsers, Super Junior members and actor Lee Min Ho, signed in 2012. "At a time when all eyes were still on Hollywood, we were already anticipating a wave of Asian invasion," Chan said.

The roster grew as Korean dramas boomed. Hyun Bin joined in 2020, Kim Soo-hyun in 2021, and EXO's Baekhyun in 2024. In 2026, Kim Soo-hyun returned to work after a long hiatus with a Bench campaign, and his fan meeting at the Mall of Asia (MOA) Arena in October drew about 20,000 people. "The Filipino audience is legendary when it comes to being an audience whether for fan meets or concerts," Chan said.

4. EDSA billboards as a media event

Bench's billboards at EDSA Guadalupe, visible from the MRT station and one of the busiest roads in the country, work as news in themselves. In February 2024, five side-by-side Kathryn Bernardo billboards appeared there with the caption "Guess who's taking over the EDSA scene!" In February 2025, Baekhyun posed in front of his own five billboards at the same spot. When Korean stars visit their billboards, fans share the photos widely, extending the reach of the outdoor ad.

The approach has also drawn criticism. In 2014, racy underwear billboards and a fashion show led to complaints and a public apology from the brand, showing the risks of provocative messages in a conservative market.

5. Fashion shows and fan meetings as experiences

Bench turns its campaigns into live events. Its 30th-anniversary show at MOA Arena in 2017 featured 110 models and 48 local celebrities. Its Bench Body underwear and denim show returned in March 2025 after eight years. Bench Fashion Week is held twice a year, and the brand's design awards were presented at Rakuten Fashion Week Tokyo in 2025. Fan meetings, mall tours and licensed collaborations with characters such as Pokémon keep the brand in the conversation between campaigns.

6. What it means for Japanese companies

Bench shows how strongly celebrity marketing works in the Philippines, where fans follow stars closely and share content widely. For Japanese brands, the lessons are to treat endorsers as long-term partners rather than one-off faces, to combine outdoor ads with fan events that create social content, and to consider Asian stars who already have Filipino fan bases. At the same time, messages need to fit local values, as Bench's own controversies show.