Colgate-Palmolive had a unique marketing challenge in launching Colgate Wisp, its new mini disposable toothbrush. Colgate began introducing the mini brush in April 2009 with help from Big Fuel, a social media marketing agency. The mini brush created a new product category for Colgate and meant marketing to a young, urban target—18- to 25-year-old men and women—a demographic the personal care giant doesn’t typically focus dedicated attention on. It was clear that the company needed to figure out how to introduce the product into relevant conversations and contexts where its college student and young professional target hangs out.
Challenge: Colgate wanted to get Wisp into the hands of young, urban consumers who are active daters. The audience is active and mobile and dating opportunities can be created in an instant via text. “Wisp is almost a brand new product category,” said Avi Savar, Founding Partner and CEO of Big Fuel. “It’s an on-the-go product. The biggest challenge for us was making the product and brand relevant to the young consumer market.”
Not surprisingly, Colgate turned to social media to help it launch a multi-pronged campaign. But who wants to “friend” or follow a disposable toothbrush on Facebook? Colgate and Big Fuel tackled the challenge by conducting a lot of research. Big Fuel worked up several creative strategies and testing the concepts. “We wanted to know, what does this product represent or mean to the audience?” Savar said.
Typically, Colgate talks to moms, but with Wisp, the marketer knew it needed unique social media components to introduce the product and seed interest. Big Fuel worked closely with Y&R and VML, Colgate’s creative and digital agencies respectively on the TV campaign, microsite, online banners and social media elements.
Strategy:Big Fuel came up with a “Be More Kissable” creative platform that positioned Colgate Wisp as a kind of technology advancement that it believed would connect with the target audience. The idea centered around self-confidence: “Everyone wants to be more kissable not just within the context of a physical kiss, but all the time. Feeling kissable is about feeling confident. From a social media standpoint, we thought it was a good platform,” Savar explained. Colgate thought so too.
The concept, one of four that Big Fuel developed, was tested in four different markets. The linchpin involved creating irreverent online video content and syndicating it on YouTube and other video-sharing hubs. Along with a strategy focus on online video, Colgate Wisp developed a Facebook application and a Be the Face of Wisp photo contest.
At the heart of the strategy—online video. Big Fuel developed a series of viral videos, partnering with eight different publishers including CollegeHumor and YourTango and Web celebrities like Kip Kay, known for his how-to and prank videos, to syndicate the content. It released eight wacky videos targeting niche interests among the target audience, contextually integrating Colgate Wisp into how-to, comedy and talkshow-genre video content. The goal was to achieve a seamless content integration with no heavy brand sell. Online video syndication offered Colgate the potential to scale its vast consumer target.
The photo contest sought to identify the most kissable person in America: Participants who entered the contest uploaded a photo to colgatewisp.com and received a widget that enabled friends to vote for them. The widget was shared via the Facebook and MySpace networks and via the microsite. “It was like a syndicated version of ‘Are you hot or not?’, Savar said.
Big Fuel turned the contest into a social experience by enabling the widget to syndicate the photo content. Participants uploaded their photo, chose a specific Wisp color and placed it in the photo as an overlay. The contest enabled segmentation by geographic area as well. For example, when a man entered the contest, he could choose to look only at women in Chicago who entered the contest and decide whether they were kissable or not. On average, Big Fuel reports that there were 11 votes cast per person or one individual voting on 11 different people.
To drive brand engagement further, Big Fuel created a Facebook app called Spin the Wisp. Once the app was installed, it had the names of the consumer’s Facebook friends. Consumers could have the app randomly pick Facebook friends for the game or they could handpick up to 16 people to fill it. The Wisp landed on exotic locations and flavors—a woman could send a virtual kiss from Paris to her crush. Spin the Wisp became a novel way to flirt.
Results: Big Fuel reports that a Real Life Twitter video produced with CollegeHumor netted more than 1.7 million plus views. The video featured man-in-the-street style interviews by a standup comic who walked around blurting out things like: “I just found this new wisp. Anybody want a kiss?”
The Kip Kaye video “Quick Draw Gadget” in which Kip constructs a quick draw gadget out of a Colgate Wisp, has generated more than 1 million views. In total, the eight videos in the “Be More Kissable” series racked up more than 4.1 million views on YouTube as of late June 2010.
The two most recent videos for Colgate Wisp are College Humor POV “New Year’s Eve” which logged 1,255,872 views and Michelle Phan’s “Kissable Lips” video which has 1,791,352 views as of late June. All the videos were seeded on multiple video-sharing sites.
The game saw a 10% click-through rate. Each time someone received a virtual kiss, they got a notification that appeared on their wall. The 10% click-through rate was based on the total number engagements vis-à-vis the notifications.
The average number of spins per install on Spin the Wisp was 7.6. There were more than 100,000 engagements and 40,000 + installations of the widget and more than 1 million unique impressions of the widget. There were 500,000 views of a faux Wisp infomercial.
Overall, as of May, 2010, Big Fuel reported 6 million+ total engagements with the Wisp campaign (widget installs, video views, game plays, pass-alongs). Big Fuel considered “engagement” as active participation, meaning someone played the game, shared it, watched a video—there was a 10-second minimum on viewing—and commented on a video, Savar said.
Key Takeaways: Colgate learned the value of what an engagement is, according to Savar. “It was the first time they ever measured anything based on engagements. They are accustomed to the number of impressions.”
Now, Colgate is working to extend the engagement metric to its more mature brands. The brand has begun to understand what the value of video, game and other content is vs. framing content only within the context of an ad buy, Savar explained.
While the campaign was in the market for four months, the videos and game continue to run.
Next Steps: Colgate has moved forward with content marketing and social marketing for others of its product brands. Colgate shot new videos for the Wisp product site and two additional viral video. The brand says it’s looking to turn customers into audiences and its brands into social identities.
