Brushing at night is a ‘good habit’. That is the problem.

Not everyone likes good habits. Little surprise that over 80% Indians don’t brush at night.

So Colgate decided to take on a challenge that dentists and persuasive Indian mums had failed at doing– getting India to brush at night.

This is a case of how we found a powerful cultural cue that was an everyday reminder and nudged India to brush at night.

This is a story of how we created a disruptive campaign that showed India the mirror and nudged them to brush at night.

Night brushing prevents many dental issues, but habits are seldom created by a preventive mindset. Most people only act when there is a problem.

Result is that 80% Indians don’t end up brushing at night.

Ironically, India needs to do it the most, given our sweet tooth.

Colgate is a leader with about 46% market share.

A big lever of growth would be to improve consumption.

If Colgate got its users to brush twice it could potentially double volume over time.

Also, this would be in sync with Colgate’s mission of ‘Improving India’s Oral Heath’.

Our objective was to impact people’s attitude and get them to think brushing at night is an essential routine.

As a result, we wanted to get some of our Colgate users to brush at night and thereby increase our volume growth.

Like someone famously said “Brush at night to keep your teeth. Brush in the morning to keep your friends’.

Sadly, 80% Indians don’t brush at night.

A number which is amongst the worst in the world when it comes to this habit.

Now weirdly, if there is one country that should be brushing at night, it should be India.

The Indian culture of food is a torture test for teeth. Life revolves around food – work, catch up with friends, neighbours dropping by, watching sports together, etc.

If that were not enough, a festival is celebrated every other day – which means more food.

Not just more food, but more sweets. India roughly consumes 35% of sweets in the world.

Imagine the plight of the Indian tooth. It goes through a lot every day, yet we don’t brush at night. No wonder our teeth are a playground for germs at night and all the oral problems that come with it.

As a leader in India, Colgate has a mission to significantly improve India’s oral health.

With a 46% market share – if Colgate users start brushing twice instead of once, Colgate could potentially double volume growth.

While the benefits of success were imminent there were enough dampeners.

The naysayers said – no one had succeeded at getting people to brush at night – neither dentist nor the persuasive Indian mum.

The Colgate team however was brave enough to take up this humongous challenge and believed it could make a difference.

Colgate’s growth depended on increasing consumption amongst users.

This meant getting Indians to also brush at night.

Colgate has a mission of improving India’s oral health.

While the consequences of not brushing at night are cavities, it doesn’t drive action unless one suffers from it.

Importantly, most people attribute cavities to sweets or bad oral health and don’t think brushing can prevent it.

Then there was an innate problem about human behaviour – when we don’t like something, we tend to forget it. We thus needed a cue to remind and drive action.

The Communication Challenge

Get people to brush at night by leveraging a cultural cue that not just reminds but is also persuasive enough to drive action.

Objective 1

Drive a 10 % behaviour shift towards night brushing being an essential routine.

Objective 2

Drive 3% volume growth in Nov ‘23- Feb ’24, against previous year, same period.

Our approach was to check behaviour and not attitude.

So we didn’t ask about night brushing.

We asked them about their eating habits in the last few days.

‘Sweets’ kept popping up. And there lay a sweet opportunity for us.

Most people claimed to ration their consumption of sweets.

However, we took their story on sweets with a pinch of salt.

We knew India had a massive Sweet Tooth.

So we asked them about yesterday and sweets. Sheepishly they said, on most days we have sweets post dinner.

Sweets were seen as the biggest cause of cavities and was amongst the last things people consumed before they went to bed.

‘Sweets after dinner’ was our breakthrough cue.

We had found an everyday habit (sweet after dinner) to remind them of a habit – brushing at night.

‘Last thing millions of Indians leave on their teeth is sweets and not toothpaste’.

‘Sweets after dinner’ was the cue.

The realisation that the ‘last thing Indians put on their teeth is sweets not toothpaste’ was the creative springboard.

We knew we had a ‘Sweet Tooth’.

However, we had to land it in a way that would jolt people out of their indifference.

The creative idea was simple yet dramatic.

We showed people from all ages and parts of India brushing their teeth – not with paste but their favourite Indian sweets.

The film ended with a provocation.

‘Millions of Indians end their night with Sugar. Not Toothpaste’.

‘Prevent Cavities. Brush Tonight.’

It ended with – Issued in Public Interest by Colgate.

Colgate was bold to make it a public interest message and not a Colgate brand sell – this way the focus was on the behaviour change and not on selling Colgate’s toothpaste.

It also lent authenticity to the communication.

The results were very encouraging.

The campaign got noticed. It got national and international media talking about importance of night brushing. This helped the brand to earn a media value of approx. 0.2M+ USD

The scores on “Brushing at Night is an Essential Everyday Activity” went up by 25%. (Kantar Data)

We grew by 4% in volume i.e. sold 0.25M KG more between Nov ’23- Feb’24 against previous year, same period.

Since all other parts of the marketing mix were the same between the two years – the additional growth can be attributed to this campaign.