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Campanie
JM
Romanians are not involved in oral care. This attitude is not driven mainly by a lack of money, but by lack of interest. 66% of Romanians don’t go to the dentist for examinations even once/year, compared to 30% European average (Source: Colegiul Medicilor Dentisti, 2012).
Oral health personal routine is also at entry level: basic products such as toothpaste and traditional toothbrushes are used in very small quantities - half of the European average usage (Source: Client internal data). New products like mouthwash, dental floss or specialized toothbrushes are virtually inexistent in Romanian households.
When it comes to toothbrushes, the involvement is even lower – consumers think that it is the toothpaste that has an active role in keeping the teeth healthy, whereas all the brushes do more or less the same thing. In the stores people are on impulse buying mode, influenced more by the visibility at the shelf or color of the product than by the brand or product benefits. Romanians spend less than 10 Lei / year for toothbrushes (Source: Client internal data).
In this context P&G decided to promote its Oral-B electric toothbrushes range. They are power toothbrushes with 5-year average life span and replaceable brush heads. The heads should be changed on average once every 3 months, like regular toothbrushes. The price for one electric brush varies from 170 Lei to 650 Lei, making the average model 20 times more expensive than an average manual toothbrush.
We knew that toothbrushes were commodity and consumers didn’t place value on them in general. So we needed a hook that would make our message interesting for them, focusing on two main consumer barriers: 1/ affordability / price - consumers were skeptical that the benefits justified the high price and 2/ the perceived complexity of the product – people were reluctant to change their life-long brushing technique with this new apparently complicated method.
General Information:
Strategy:
Strategy: The brand objectives were very clear.
1. Business objective:
a. +20% sales increase (Sep – Dec 2013 vs. May-Aug 2013, Source: Client internal data)
2. Brand objectives:
a. +30% increase in awareness (Dec 2013 vs. Sep 2013, Source: iVOX Quantitative Research)
b. +20% increase in purchase intent (Dec 2013 vs. Sep 2013, Source: iVOX Quantitative Research)
However, the marketing challenge was obvious as well: how can we convince Romanian consumers to buy a very expensive and complex product, in a low involvement category?
From the very beginning it was clear that in Romania, Oral-B electric toothbrush was not a mass product. The first strategic step in developing our campaign was to identify a niche of potential consumers that would be wide enough to deliver on the campaign objectives, but also specific enough to react to our message.
First and foremost, they needed to have high income (over 3,500 Lei / household) that would allow them to afford an electric toothbrush. Secondly, we looked for people with high involvement in personal care.
We identified a very interesting and rising category or Romanian consumers: People with a “healthy attitude” in life.
For them, health is not the absence of illness; it’s more of a lifestyle. They practice sports more than the average Romanians, try eat healthy, use high quality personal care products, are interested in eco-bio alternatives, get prevention treatments (health and beauty), have annual check-ups and so on.
They are also open-minded people, opinionated, intellectual and creative (the kind that listened to Radio Guerilla). Due to their busy lives, they use the internet for information and also for shopping (idx. 160% - online shopping compared to general population, Source: Sesame SNA 2013).
When it comes to oral care their involvement is way above average. They take good daily care of their teeth and go to the dentist periodically for prevention (Source: Sesame SNA 2013). The dentist recommendation is also the most powerful influencer when choosing oral care products (Source: Sesame SNA 2013).
Positioning the Oral-B electric toothbrush in the trusted and valued dentist universe (instead of the uninteresting toothbrush category) would automatically associate our product with all the benefits people seek when going to the dentist (prevention through professional cleaning) in an implicit manner.
Suddenly our strategy became clear. We needed to change the frame of reference: FROM better than a regular toothbrush TO the dentist experience in your home.
Our product would no longer play in the same league as traditional toothbrushes; it would work together with doctors for improved oral health.
Changing the frame of reference allowed us to change the disadvantages into advantages:
Price barrier: FROM 20 times more expensive that regular toothbrush TO similar investment as 1 dentist routine treatment (but with a 5-year usage)
Complexity barrier: FROM a highly complicated product TO as complex as the professional tools used by the dentist.
Execution:
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