Editor’s note: Michael J. Rabuck is senior vice president at rsc, The Quality Measurement Company, an Evansville, Ind., research firm.

Fueled by strong television advertising and product innovation, sales for the toothbrush category have recently shown dramatic increases. Annual toothbrush sales topped three-quarters of a billion dollars in 1998, up 12 percent from the previous year and 23 percent versus 1996 (Exhibit 1).

In 1997 and 1998, the top five brands in this category enjoyed sales growth, with the strongest growth coming not from the largest brands but from the entries of the world’s two largest television advertisers, Procter & Gamble and Unilever (Exhibit 2). During this time period, each of the top five brands aired sales-effective ads, with the largest sales increases achieved by Mentadent and Crest, the two brands with the strongest ads.

Persuasive advertising drives category growth

Our firm, rsc, tracks the toothbrush category through its CATS (Comprehensive Advertising Tracking Service) system. This syndicated service provides ARS Persuasion scores (a proven indicator of sales effectiveness - see sidebar for more information) for commercials that air in a given category. In 1997 and 1998, CATS data revealed that the toothbrush category had the benefit of strong advertising, which previous studies have shown to affect not only the advertised brand’s growth but the category as a whole (Ashley, 1998; Mondello, 1996). In her 1998 Journal of Advertising Research article, Ashley related the conclusions from an rsc study which used CATS data from four categories (dentifrice, margarine, glass cleaner, and spaghetti sauce) to examine the effect of persuasive advertising on category growth:

Although an individual brand’s advertising generally has the purpose of increasing the advertised brand’s sales (and share), the aggregate effect of persuasive advertising in a category is an increase in total category volume (the more sales effective the advertising, the greater the increase).

Likewise, Mondello (1996) noted the positive effect of persuasive Celestial Seasonings advertising on that category:

Our advertising didn’t just steal share from competitors; it grew the herbal tea category. While tonnage for most other hot beverages was declining during this time period, herbal teas sales were up, with increases as high as 12 percent in one of the spot television markets.

Persuasive advertising drives brand sales

As shown in Exhibit 2, a review of CATS data revealed that advertising was driving Mentadent and Crest’s remarkable sales growth in 1997 and 1998. This finding is consistent with the results of rsc’s 1998 Global Validity Study of 155 ARS Persuasion to in-market cases, which suggest that the higher an ad’s ARS Persuasion score, the higher the sales increase expected (Exhibit 3). Recently these findings were described in The Advertiser (Shirley, 1999):

While this method has been rigorously managed and validated in over 2,000 cases, the most recent study shows the metric’s predictive and straightforward nature:

  • Ads scoring +7 and above have a 97 percent likelihood of moving the business ahead at least a half share point.
  • Ads scoring under +2 will probably not (82 percent odds) even maintain the brand’s market position.
  • If you want to be 80 percent confident of maintaining or growing the brand, ads scoring +4 and above will be aired.

Given this empirical knowledge about how advertising effectiveness relates to sales and share growth, the following sections will review the Mentadent and Crest commercials to gain some insight about what might have made them so successful at building brand preference, sales, and market share.

Mentadent ProCare Toothbrush

According to Mentadent’s Web site, "Nearly a quarter (22 percent) of dentists believe that their patients brush their teeth and gums too hard." Based on this premise, Unilever is marketing its $3.00 Mentadent ProCare toothbrush as the one that will help consumers be more gentle when they brush.

Ammirati Puris Lintas used this "gentle on teeth and gums" selling proposition to produce the highest-scoring toothbrush ad over the two-year period. "Miles Rubin’s Dad’s a Dentist :30," which began airing in August 1998, achieved an ARS Persuasion score of +11.2 (at the 92nd percentile of all ads tested by rsc).

The commercial, a testimonial by Miles Rubin, uses a problem/solution format to spotlight Mentadent ProCare toothbrush’s brand-differentiating features: "a fully flexible handle" and "special bristles (that) clean teeth and massage gums." The tagline urges viewers to "Brush smarter. Not harder."

While much of the ad’s strength is probably due to a strong selling proposition, its success may also come in part from its strong diagnostic profile (Exhibit 4). The commercial includes 10 of the 17 known strategic and executional elements (or rsc Validated drivers [see sidebar for rsc Validated drivers methodology]) which have been quantitatively demonstrated to relate to sales-effective advertising. The most important of these is Mentadent’s brand-differentiated key message, followed by its strong brand name which is both double-branded and reinforces the brush’s unique benefits. The inclusion of three positive executional elements points to the commercial’s strong product focus: the product is on screen for more than a third of the commercial, and the ad both demonstrates the use of the product and gives information on the results of that use. Finally, the execution avoided four of the five negative factors that tend to detract from a commercial’s message.

Crest Extender

Leo Burnett used a very different approach in Procter and Gamble’s humorous introductory ad for the Crest Extender toothbrush. The commercial features a family that uses dental floss for tying fishing lures, hanging model airplanes, stringing beads - everything except flossing their teeth. It highlights the toothbrushes "gentle extender fibers to help clean deep between teeth" and closes with the tagline "The new Crest Extender fits between to get teeth clean."

The commercial scored +9.8 (at the 88th percentile of ARS Persuasion scores) and began airing in June of 1998. Like the Mentadent ad, "Need to Floss :30" has a strong diagnostic profile, with 11 of the 17 rsc Validated drivers including a brand-differentiating message and a brand name which reinforces Extender’s benefits (Exhibit 4). The ad’s executional content is also very strong; it used all five positive elements and avoided three of the negative elements, indicating a very strong product focus with some distraction due to the ad’s four-person cast.

Oral-B CrossAction off to a strong start in early 1999

1998 was a blockbuster year for the toothbrush category, but 1999 is also off to a very strong start. Category leader Gillette scored early with their new $5 Oral-B CrossAction, the most expensive mass-marketed toothbrush in history.

The CrossAction introductory ad "Intro: Three Years" achieved an ARS Persuasion score of 8.7, the strongest toothbrush ad aired in early 1999. Lowe & Partners/SMS was behind this product-as-hero introductory spot for the "revolutionary" new Oral-B product. The ad focuses on CrossAction’s "unique crisscross bristles (which) penetrate to lift out and sweep away more plaque than any other brush." Like the Mentadent and Crest commercials, this very product-focused ad has a strong diagnostic profile, with 14 of the 17 rsc Validated Drivers (Exhibit 4). The commercial used five of the seven strategic elements related to strong ARS Persuasion scores: brand differentiation, new-product information, a competitive comparison, a superiority claim, and a double-branded product name. It also used four of the five positive executional elements and avoided all five negatively-related elements.

With this introductory advertising extolling CrossAction’s strongly differentiated feature and superior benefits, Oral-B market share jumped to a 3+ year high of 27.9 percent as the ad began airing in late February 1999 (Exhibit 5).

Looking to 1999 and beyond

According to an October 1998 article in The Boston Globe, Oral-B President A. Bruce Cleverly expects that oral care may be a $2 billion dollar business for Gillette by the year 2000. Following Oral-B’s success at "trading customers up," Unilever and Colgate Palmolive are introducing their own premium brushes into this fast-growing category. Unilever is unveiling its $3.50 Mentadent Surround with a $15 million dollar media budget, and Colgate-Palmolive is planning a $10 million summer launch of the Navigator (priced at $3.29). Dynamic product innovation and abundance of persuasive advertising promise to keep this category growing into the new millennium. rsc will continue to track this and other categories to determine advertising’s impact on brand preference and market share as well as category sales.

SIDEBAR

Measurement methodology

ARS Persuasion metric. The ARS Persuasion measure is based on a pre-post shift in brand choice obtained in a secure, off-air, simulated-purchase environment. It is calculated by subtracting the percent of respondents choosing the advertised product over competition before exposure to the television material from the percent choosing the advertised product after exposure - the net effect of retention and attraction as a result of the advertising stimulus. In the U.S., the ARS Persuasion sample consists of 800-1,000 respondents (aged 16+) randomly recruited by mail from eight geographically-dispersed markets.

The quality of rsc’s ARS Persuasion measurement is continuously monitored through our ongoing Measurement Hygiene programs: about 2,500 test-retests have been conducted to manage and improve the metric’s reliability and precision over time, and about 2,000 tests have been compared to market performance for validating and calibrating. Additionally, the simplicity and straightforward nature of the metric make it easy to interpret and act upon.

Rsc Validated drivers. The rsc Validated drivers are made up of seven strategic elements and 10 executional content elements which are related to superior ARS Persuasion results (a list of these elements is shown in Exhibit 4). The rsc Validated drivers are identified using a database of over 14,000 ARS tests and 5,000 recent tests conducted on more than 1,300 brands in over 150 product categories. Each commercial is coded according to 35 strategic and 122 executional content dimensions. Each of the dimensions is then examined across all current ads to determine whether it is associated with higher or lower ARS Persuasion scores.

References

Ashley, S. R. "How to Effectively Compete Against Private-Label Brands." Journal of Advertising Research 38, 1 (1998): 75-82.

Bittar, C. "Category Wars: Chesebrough, Colgate Stir Up Brush War." Brandweek (April 5, 1999).

Blair, M. H., and M. J. Rabuck. "Advertising Wearin and Wearout: Ten Years Later. More Empirical Evidence and Successful Practice." Journal of Advertising Research 38, 5 (1998): 7-18.

"Frequently Asked Questions About Mentadent ProCare Toothbrush." [From http:/www.mentadent.com, May 1999].

Mondello, M. "Turning Research Into Return-on-Investment." Journal of Advertising Research 36, 4 (1996): RC2-RC6.

Reidy, C. "New Bristle Designs Lifts Price to $5." The Boston Globe (October 28, 1998) [From http:/www.oralb.com, May 1999].

Shirley, D. "From Copy Testing and Diagnostics to Process-Driven Improvement: A Paradigm Shift in Advertising Development." The Advertiser Issue #36 (April/May 1999): p. 32 (3 pages).