Teeth are the new lips!

Dental care is white-hot! Recent spottings of innovative products by Crest, Colgate, Aquafresh and Rembrandt.

Dental care is white-hot! Recent spottings of innovative products by Crest, Colgate and Rembrandt. Let’s face it. After cosmetic surgery is done re-sculpting noses, cheeks and eye-lids, and botox finishing off the job by ‘plumping’ lips and removing wrinkles, what’s left for beauty marketers desperate to make money off consumers’ insecurities? Well, how about teeth?! Due to a combination of ongoing medical research, ever-more segmented marketing strategies, and unchecked SNOBMODDITY, DFMG (dental fast moving consumer goods) are white-hot. To get you inspired and keep you in the know, here are some recent spottings… • Toothpaste for Hispanics: Crest Whitening Expressions is a new line of whitening toothpastes and liquid gels in the US that come in bold flavors appealing to Latin taste buds (!). Think ‘Fresh Citrus Breeze’, ‘Extreme Herbal Mint’ and ‘ Cinnamon Rush’. Advertising for this line includes Spanish-language ads, and scratch-and-sniff technology, used both in print ads, and on packaging. In Crest’s own words: “Porque todos tenemos nuestro propio sabor.” (“Because we all have our own flavor.”) Actually, Hispanics weren’t the only ‘new segment’ on Crest’s radar over the last 12 months: • When introduced in the US, late 2002, P&G’s Crest Rejuvenating Effects was billed as the first toothpaste created and marketed for women. The Rejuvenating Effects website educates women on topics like ‘The Aging Mouth’ and ‘SmileCare’. Marketing lingo? Maybe. But why not, if it gets you the attention of, oh, 50% of all consumers nationwide? To quote management guru Tom Peters: “Fire all male salespeople!” 😉 • Another ‘world’s first’: the Olsen twins, popular with tweens around the world, launched mary-kateandashley, the toothpaste, in cooperation with Aquafresh. It’s actually the first childrens toothpaste brand to feature ‘live’ celebrities (as opposed to cartoon characters). May Springwise recommend that other toothpaste manufacturers quickly team up with American Idols and the likes?Oh, and let’s not forget about:• Dental spas: while urban spas are still a young and expanding phenomenon, the first Dental Spa has already been spotted: the Boulder Center for Aesthetic Dentistry (Colorado) offers paraffin hand waxes, neck rubs, fruit smoothies and complimentary hand and foot massages to patients coming in to have their teeth taken care of! (Source: New York Times.) Sounds like a great example of the GRAND BOUTIQUE trend: dental surgeries and practices are as staid as traditional business hotels, and we know what happened to them!• Whiteners: Crest (yes, they’re a busy bunch at Procter & Gamble) is about to launch their Whitestrips in Germany, Italy and Austria. Crest claims that applying Whitestripes to your teeth twice a day for 30 minutes, over a period of two weeks, will give you a noticeably whiter smile. Alternatively, the Rembrandt Smile Makeover promises to do the same thing in a one-off, two hours session. No word on whether Rembrandt will cross the Atlantic any time soon though. Nice opportunity for a savvy distributor? Oh, and let’s not forget Colgate‘s Simply White gel, to be applied just before going to bed, which is competing with Crest Whitestripes’ latest offshoot: Night Effects.Confusing? Not to worry. The key insights are that branded, over-the-counter whiteners are A) a multi-hundred million business in the US, only a few years after the first brands launched; and B) haven’t spread around the world yet. Happy smiles may well equal cash-registers ringing from France to South Korea, so study the products mentioned above, and get going!