The night hammer

We created an innovative campaign to educate Indian consumers about the importance of night brushing.

The challenge

Night brushing is virtually non-existent in India. The Per Capita Consumption (PCC) of oral care products is just 125 versus 468 in Europe. To increase PCC, we had to change consumer habits to brush at night. We targeted both parents and children – adults to change habit, children to educate.

Our insight

Consumers believe there’s no point in brushing teeth at night, as you’re about to go to bed, so we needed a strong, disruptive device to change adult attitude towards night brushing.

Our solution

Reading the newspaper is another morning-only phenomenon, so our strategy was led by a historic innovation – the creation of India’s first ever night newspaper. The Night Hammer went out in Hyderabad between 7.30 and 9.30pm, contained a mix of the day’s news and smart messages about night brushing. 100,000 copies were distributed from 700+ vendors across 30+ depots.

The initiative was covered by TV news – nightly messages continued via hourly time checks on TV news and opt-in text alerts reminders between 7 and 10pm.

To the educate kids, we targeted school assemblies showing 72,000 kids across 150 schools in Hyderabad the benefits of night brushing. They were encouraged to pledge that they would brush their teeth twice a day.

The results

• 84% reached aware it’s healthy to brush at night
• 46% reached claimed to brush twice versus 19%