Working as a beauty assistant for Canada’s leading fashion magazine comes with a lot of fun perks. I get free manicures, get to take home new eyeshadow palettes from our walk-in beauty closet and get to attend fabulous events and launch parties for new perfumes, mascaras and hair products. When my editors send me to one of these events, they prep me by telling me what brand is hosting the affair, and what new product they will be releasing. Last week however, I was invited to a salon to get a blowout for a “secret shampoo.” How curious. I wouldn’t get to know what shampoo was being used on my hair until after I had been washed, dried and styled.

I walked into the salon with a messy, post-Soul Cycle top knot, saturated in a thick layer of dry shampoo. “Sorry…” I whispered to my stylist. But she didn’t seem to mind. “This product is like a facial for your scalp,” she reassured me “it will wash all of this right out.” That it did. The second that the fresh smelling bubbles hit my hair, I felt more clean than an A-list celeb fresh out of rehab. The gritty dry shampoo, spin class sweat and last night’s hairspray just seemed to melt off of my hair. So just what product was it?

After a quick blow dry, I finally looked up from my phone and glanced at myself in the mirror. My jaw dropped. I felt like I was looking at the after photo of a contestant from Extreme Makeover. That is not what I walked in looking like, that was for sure. I had volume, shine and smelled like I had just spent the afternoon bathing in essential oils. “Can you at least tell me how much this secret shampoo costs?” I asked my stylist. “Under $10.” she smirked.

After taking like, at least a hundred selfies, I hovered around the publicists, anxiously awaiting the reveal of the mystery product. The secret shampoo sat on a pedestal, covered by a white blanket. “3…2…1,”  they counted down, lifting the blanket to reveal, to my surprise, a bottle of Head & Shoulders.

“You underestimated us, didn’t you,” I imagined the bottles saying to me.

I certainly did. Prior to this experience, I had thought of Head & Shoulders as a brand I would turn to solely for help with dandruff and scalp health. Never would I have reached for it if I was doing my hair for an event and wanted a shiny, bouncy, Rapunzel-level blowout. “Women want beautiful hair,” said Dr. Rolanda, principal scientist for Procter and Gamble when I asked her about the shampoo. “They want long, thick, beautiful, shiny hair. What a lot of women don’t know, is that the scalp is the foundation to that beautiful hair.” Touché.

I made that blowout last me for three days, and then I finally had to cave and take a shower. But trust that when I did, I reached for my new Head & Shoulders Smooth & Silky, not the bougie overpriced cosmetic line I had been so dependent on before.