By Adnan Arnautlija
Social responsibility and activism of a brand are becoming increasingly important when it comes to choosing a product, especially when the case in point is a toothpaste, used every day, and more than once. Consumers choose brands with ideas and an attitude. Company Neva Zagreb, producer of Plidenta toothpaste, wanted to convey one such message to consumers.
The idea for the campaign was created just before the 2017 Local Elections in Croatia. Before the election, major turmoil was underway in the political arena, coalitions were made and destroyed, and governments alike, overnight.
The idea was to use the pre-election hype in the teaser phase with provocative messages without dental context but using the terms which have one meaning in dentistry and oral hygiene (a bridge represents fixed prosthetics, gums represent dental flesh, a fountain is a basin for rinsing of the teeth, a crown represents fixed prosthetics etc.), while having another one in local everyday life (the Bridge is a political party, the Right – meaning “gums” in Croatian language, represents the more conservative political orientation, rosaries – “crown” in Croatian language, serve for prayer in religions, and the building of a fountain was the main political promise of the mayor of Zagreb).
The creative and media strategy has followed the standard communication channels of political parties in the campaign, such as billboards, digital city lights, web banners, and social media. The campaign was divided into two phases – a teaser and a reveal phase. The teaser phase was supposed to raise dust through provocative messages, while the revealing phase, by revealing the dental context on the day of pre-election silence, was to contribute to the “a-ha moment”.
During the campaign, sales of Plidenta Healthcare tooth pastes increased by 55% in comparison to the previous year, and by 17% for the entire Plidenta range.
We learned everything else we didn’t know about the “Let us show our teeth” campaign, which was one of the top25 in the regional competition BalCannes in 2017, from Krešimir Razov, Account Manager at IDEO Zagreb agency.
We came up with the idea… in the time just before the Local elections of 2017 in Croatia. In the days before the elections there was major turmoil in the political arena, as coalitions and governments were formed and dissolved overnight. Media space, and hence the consumers, were overwhelmed with political messages, platitudes and promises, and we wanted to challenge those political promises in an intelligent and humorous way.
Our guiding thought was… to use ambiguous words in our messages, which become quite provocative outside their dentistry context.
During the realization, the biggest problem we encountered was… that there were no problems.
The greatest contribution of this campaign was… positioning of Plidenta as a socially responsible brand with an idea and a cause.
And it was special… because it was built on strong textual messages and the fact that its timing and local character were spot on.
When it comes to our project, we are most proud of… the reaction and engagement of consumers that it provoked, and the fact that the campaign reached a great number of consumers, even those who usually ignore advertising.
If we were to go from scratch… we wouldn’t pay attention to threats and hateful messages we received during the campaign.
Throughout the process we’ve learned… that politics is an endless pool of ambiguous messages.
What you certainly didn’t know… is that it’s quite important to show your teeth sometimes.
We took home from BalCannes… well, we didn’t brought a lion, but we did awoken the lion for some new campaigns.
