Oral B's dig at yesterday's toothpastes

P&G-owned brand Oral B came up with an innovative ad in the TOI taking a dig at older brands.

On Monday, January 6, The Times of India (TOI) readers of Mumbai, Delhi and Gurgaon woke up to find that they were delivered the Sunday edition of the TOI with decades old news of Indo-China aggression, Pakistan-China trade pacts and others. The look and feel of the paper resembled that of the olden days and the date on the masthead was January 6, 1963.

The creative rendition of the front page was a part of Oral B's jacket advertisement. The first half of the page had five decades old news while the second half had a doctor holding an unbranded red toothpaste packet and a catch line saying 'You wouldn't want yesterday's newspaper. Why would you want yesterday's toothpaste?'

The flip side of the page was a usual Oral B Pro Health toothpaste ad featuring its endorser, Madhuri Dixit.

The idea behind the ad was to urge the readers to switch their toothpaste preference to Oral B.

The ad showed a red coloured toothpaste packet, clearly attempting a dig at Colgate without mentioning the name.

The creative was designed by Publicis Singapore and was published in the Mumbai, Delhi and Gurgaon editions of TOI. The ad was mainly targeted at women in urban households.

Speaking about the innovation, Sheena Kapoor, head, innovations, TOI Group, says, "Oral B wanted to drive home the point and aspect about shift from old habits (read brands Colgate/Close Up) to adopting new habits/brands. The whole idea was to weave the transition from old to new and we thought about the concept of 'since you don't read old news, why should you use old toothpaste?' For this innovation, we replicated the TOI front page with an actual page taken from TOI archives section depicting the old TOI masthead and old font, and the old look and feel of the newspaper."

The media buying for the ad was by Mediacom.

Through the ad, Oral B has made an attempt to change consumer habits and consumption pattern. The impact was to create awareness of Oral B and influence the adoption of the brand as a new toothpaste in households.

The campaign was in sync with the brand's TV commercial.

The toothpaste was launched by P&G in July, 2013 in the Indian market, which is valued at about Rs 6,000 crore.