431. LAWRENCE PINEDA & ROWENA MORAN: 1987 Creative Guild’s Top Models of the Year for San Miguel Beer’s “Romance” TVC 30s.

LEADING ROLES, TOP MODELS, Rowena Moran and Lawrence Pineda

At the 1988 Creative Guild Ad of the Year Awards Night held at the Metropolitan Theater, the Ten Best Commercial Models for 1987 were chosen for the first time, “for their effective portrayal of distinctive characters in the most natural and realistic manner, through skillfull acting that captures the drama between product and consumer”.

 WATCH SAN MIGUEL BEER "ROMANCE" TVC HERE:

uploaded on youtube by: Casvar Daikun

Two winners that year were the lead characters in a 30 sec. San Miguel Beer commercial entitled “Romance”: ROWENA MORAN and LAWRENCE  PINEDA. In the TV ad by McCann Erickson and directed by Dir. Jun Urbano, a  spat with his girlfriend (Moran) drove a young man (Pineda) to drown his sorrows over bottles of beer in a bar. He even refuses to take a call from the girl. Friends console him, until one mediates and calls the girlfriend, who comes rushing over to the bar. There, the couple kiss and make up, while the happy friends go back to their billiard games.

The SMB “Romance” TVC was selected as the Ad of the Month for November 1987, and competed for the TV Ad of the Year that same year, won by AMA’s “Milo” Gymnast, starring Bea Lucero.

ROWENA MORAN was a teen beauty queen and model, who did a lot of commercials but got noticed in her high-profile SMB ad. This paved the way for a short career in movies,  appearing in “Kapag Puno Na ang Salop” (1987), with Fernando Poe Jr. A daughter was born out of their affair—Lourdes Viriginia Moran-Poe, or better known as the actress Lovi Poe. Moran left her career to raise Lovi as a single parent, and prefers to lead a private life.

LAWRENCE SHEA PINEDA was urged by his model-friend, the late Jumbo Montelibano and designer Aureo Alonso to join the modelling world in 1984. He was one of the founding members of the Professional Models Association of the Philippines (PMAP)  and his contemporaries include Lito Gruet, Monsour del Rosario, Eric Quizon, Leo Ravago, Susan Africa, Desiree Verdadero, Tina Maristela, Ping Federis, among others. He dabbled in films, starting with “One Day, Isang Araw “(1988, with FPJ and Matet), and he was last seen in the action-drama movie AWOL, starring Gerald Anderson, and directed by Enzo Williams. Today, he is married to Zenas Pineda and describes himself as “Dad, former runway model, actor, recorder of memories using iPhone 12 & Nikon, a Catholic, and a 3rd generation Irish-Filipino.

 TRIVIA: The TVC JINGLE borrows the tune of  “Tomorrow’s Love” (1965), by Hugo Montenegro, which, in 1970 was also reworked with Pilipino lyrics to be the theme song of the first “bomba” (soft core porn) film “Uhaw”, starring Merle Fernandez. Which is why on youtube, you will find the SMB TV titled “Uhaw”.

 SOURCES:

1987-188 Creative Guild Ad of the Year programme

San Miguel Beer Uhaw, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETr6BSzMHdc, uploaded by Casvar Daikun, 2011.

They Turned Modelling Into a Profession, 13 Oct. 2017, Phil. Daily Inquirer, https://lifestyle.inquirer.net/275600/turned-modeling-profession/

Recent photo of L. Pineda: Lawrence Pineda FB Page

Recent photo of R. Moran: https://pixelatedplanet.net/2020/05/meet-kapuso-star-lovi-poes-equally-gorgeous-mom-former-actress-model-rowena-moran/