In India, a woman’s worth starts with her skin and hair. 

Fair skin, long hair is the only beauty standard. Or you’re undesirable. 

Natural beauty differences have ugly consequences for women. Deciding her confidence, a successful career, worthy spouse, social status. India’s largest matchmaking site even had a shade filter that left out ‘dark’ women. Mainstream media+beauty brands are part of the problem.

Now Colgate Visible White, a cosmetic product wanted to have a beauty conversation with young Indian women.

But, how do we get women to feel beautiful about their smile? When in reality, generations have been conditioned to believe beautiful is fair skin, long hair.  

How can a toothpaste brand start this beauty movement?

#SmileOutLoud dared to do what no beauty-brand did in India: challenge a toxic standard. We made invisible beauty visible in India. By empowering women to celebrate out loud their diverse beauty, with a smile. 

We believed when you smile radiant & uninhibited, you’re your most beautiful. #SmileOutLoud broke free from beauty biases by positioning smiles as the ultimate beauty marker, not a woman’s skin colour.

#SmileOutLoud wanted women owning their natural beauty differences in the loudest, most visible way: with a smile.

But if Indian women have never seen what diverse beauty looks like, how can they celebrate it?

In an unprecedented move, we chose to cast smiles distinctly outside the beauty standard. Then used our national might to amplify these smiles.

We chose 3 young influencers who wear their ‘imperfections’ with a smile:

Dolly Singh: India’s most-loved influencer, who gets trolled for crooked teeth.

Toshada Uma: India’s only petit model + alopecia awareness advocate.

Prarthana Jagan: a model with vitiligo, bullied for her skin condition.

With #SmileOutLoud, the brand that always pushed the perfect ‘Colgate’ smile.Now championed every smile as a beautiful smile.

We didn’t want this to be another toothpaste conversation.

We wanted Visible White O2 to be a cosmetic brand that takes a stand, and speaks to women beyond the lens of product.

To do this, we identified a few gaps we could fill.

The gap in market: the beauty conversation right now was one-sided. #SmileOutLoud was the beauty point of view women didn’t have access to.

The gap in audience: Diversity only existed for the urban rich. #SmileOutLoud wanted to change beauty norms, not just for a privileged few, but all women.

The gap in media: Mainstream media reinforces toxic beauty tropes. Social media prioritises feed-content to project a popular ‘ideal’.

#SmileOutLoud used its national reach to make beauty visible in places where diversity did not exist.

#SmileOutLoud made invisible beauty, visible.

We amplified a message that nobody was hearing and became the beauty brand women wanted to champion.

10th March,2022: we launched our muses on every national platform.

TVCs across leading English-speaking + regional-language channels.

Front-page ads across India’s most widely-circulated newspapers.

Our network worked hard, so non-urban women could finally be included in the beauty conversation.

Our message was clear: #SmileOutLoud and proud. Our beauty’s here to be visible.

On social media, we did what no brand had done before.

We went against the algorithms that only pushed a distorted ‘ideal’

To show women the point of view nobody else was.

We hyper-targeted our films to women following hashtags,accounts opposite to our messaging.

Those subscribed to #hairperfection…saw Toshada embrace her alopecia. Those double-tapping #fairskin posts… saw Prarthana celebrate her vitiligo. Those following #teethgoals…saw Dolly #SmileOutLoud.

Every heart-emoji to us, now helped women with diverse traits finally become visible in more women’s newsfeeds.

Our one small targeting change, was a massive leap towards fixing an unfair standard.

#SmileOutLoud made unique beauty visible in newsfeeds that had never seen diversity.

In just one month, our numbers were unprecedented:

Our film got 83.8 million views across all social platforms.

A spectacular 3.8% increase in market share on e-comm.

Daily offtakes saw a 2x increase.

360% increase in brand search impressions.

Positive brand sentiment increased by over 80%

More importantly, we made diverse beauty visible across 50+ non-urban cities.

Young influencers, Bollywood celebrities, Journalists, LGBTQIA+ advocates came together on social platforms to celebrate every beautiful, every smile out loud.

With every loud smile, we shared ‘beautiful’ to generations of women who’ve grown up believing they’re ugly and unworthy.

We also made our muses more visible.

Toshada & Dolly now have other mainstream brand endorsements and opportunities, where none had existed before.

Colgate was always an iconic brand in India. With #SmileOutLoud we became a beauty brand women love to champion.