Yesterday, as I was watching the IPL match between Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings T20 cricket match, I saw a new style of toothpaste ad from Colgate. Not that it was great but it was definitely different from their usual ads which used to talk in a language which I am sure even their marketing team doesn’t understand.
The success of Swami Ramdev’s Patanjali in India has forced multinational companies including Colgate brand to reinvent how they cater to the Indian audience. The above ad still doesn’t get it but it is good to finally, finally see a toothpaste ad without its usual technical gimmicks.
Traditionally, for a toothpaste ad, an expert(??) doctor with a white coat will come and talk about a dental disease that nobody understands and a certification with an acronym that doesn’t mean anything. The marketers want the audience to understand that the product is something that is certified by leading associations with recommendations from expert doctors. But these ads were more painful than the pain caused by the cavities, gum diseases, tooth decay or bad breath.
Let us see how these toothpaste ads have evolved over the years. In the 1980s, Colgate helped people overcome bad breath
In the 1990s, the marketers used the popularity of the the newly crowned Miss Universe, Aishwarya Rai and how Colgate helped to keep the teeth as good as Aishwarya’s.
Then, they went little creative(??) and taught youngsters how they can woo Aishwarya Rai with this awful ad below
Then, came the doctors with the white coat recommending Colgate toothpaste. This is the start of the era of the various tooth diseases that were going to afflict Indians for the next 15 years. At first, the white coats spoke about calcium and minerals
Then, they spoke about cavities
Then they spoke about healthy gums
Then they spoke about tooth decay but this time, the paste was trusted by mothers and recommended by dentists
Then they spoke about active salts, charcoal and neem. To give more context, Indians were using salt, charcoal and neem before toothpastes came in and brands like Colgate fought hard to change this behaviour through advertisements. But they ended up selling active salts, charcoal and neem which is funny.
Then they spoke about tooth sensitivity using a dentist practicing outside India since anything from abroad is good
Then, they again became creative(??) and used Bollywood star, Ranveer Singh to transform a boring railway platform through his fresh breath of air.
If you brush your teeth with Colgate, you can transform all the boring places with your fresh breath of air. I know, I know…It was not my idea. It was theirs. But I am sure you must be happy not to see some white coat come and talk about a weird dental disease every time.
Through their latest ad (scroll up to the first video on top), they have again shed their white coats, avoided certifications, and basically calmed down. It is a relief not only for me but for every Indian audience who have to watch these tasteless ads in the middle of an important cricket match or a bollywood awards show. What it teaches are two things 1. Toothpaste ads need a major reinvention 2. Multinational companies always struggle to find relevance locally and ended up losing to the local players who take the ‘know how’ & cleverly succeed in catering to their audience effectively.
When I was doing my Masters program 10 years ago in Japan, we used to have a ‘Ad Zab’ as part of our marketing class. Each student can bring their favorite ads and show it to the class. I remember the ads from 3 countries — USA, Thailand, India. It helped me to understand the different sensitivities around language and stories that resonate with different cultures.
I watched the toothpaste ads from several countries while writing this article and realized that these ads need a major reinvention. They are just plain, dull and boring. In some cases, where they used the Bollywood heroes, they look and sound stupid.
But it also made me think on what I would do differently to help the customers think about my brand of toothpaste(if I have to sell one) since this is a fast moving consumer good that is used daily and one where there are so many competing good brands. What else can we do and who else can we bring other than expert doctors, mothers and bollywood actors to generate trust around a toothpaste brand?
Whenever a product gets commoditized, it is hard to compete on existing dimensions which are considered basic features of a product. In the case of a toothpaste, all the technical specs are basics. Consumers also know that the product cannot make their teeth look like Bollywood actors and that they can better advice from the dentist next door than believing the expert doctor who comes in the advertisements. May be tooth paste manufacturers can develop a dental kit for office goers which will help them check bad breath through a simple process — say apply the paste in your tongue and if it turns purple, you have bad breath or something like that along with some instant relief ideas. This way, they can enable more consumers to brush multiple times in a day instead of once and that could lead to more sales.
If you have some interesting ideas to make these ads watchable, please share here or directly with the advertising companies that makes these ads. I hope we all can put an end to this advertising menace that manifests in the form of toothpaste ads.
