Orajel Kids is part of Church & Dwight’s Orajel line of oral care products. When the brand came to Spitball, they faced a marketing challenge similar to other personal care brands – increase the lifetime value of the brand to consumers. The Orajel Kids portfolio consisted of 3 stages that fit the changing needs of children ages 1 to 10 however the brand itself had little awareness. 

So gather round while we tell the story of how we reinvented the Orajel Kids brand. 

One of the biggest issues that Orajel Kids faced was that consumers knew the licensed product but not the brand. “Oh I have the Paw Patrol toothpaste” was a verbatim from the Spitball consumer focus groups that directly informed the urgency to create brand meaning. Spitball sought to create a platform that not only resonated with parents but also felt authentic to the Orajel master brand. In true Spitball fashion, we rolled up our sleeves, brushed our teeth, played with our kids and let our imagination run rampant. Born from our relentless research and curious creativity came a powerful and strategic idea that got everyone to smile.

When you spend time with kids, you start to realize they love to smile. In fact, the average kid smiles 400 times a day. Over the course of the first ten years of their life, that’s roughly one million times. This fact as well as the emotional benefit of a parent seeing their child smile was the spark to the new brand platform of “There for the First Million Smiles.” Bringing this to life could have simply been a collection of kids smiling, but Spitball looked to create a “smile-lapse” showing how all kids should grow up Orajel Kids.

Spitball created a scrapbook theme for the brand’s design language that payed homage to capturing childhood memories to align with the strategic storytelling while providing a versatile canvas for marketing assets. After sourcing and highlighting one child in our anthem spot, Spitball expanded the campaign with brand owned content that leveraged licensed products but put the brand and audience front and center. Day-in-the-life video vignettes captured everyday moments that reinforced the relief parents feel when minor milestones are accomplished in their child’s life – from first tooth to first dentist trip to first day of school.

While video content helped drive brand meaning, Spitball understands the challenges of simply getting your child to brush their teeth, let alone for 2 minutes. How can we help parents, not simply drive brand awareness and sales? Let’s make it fun for kids too! We created seasonal brush timers that helped kids stay engaged while brushing those tiny teeth – from sharks to holiday characters.

Beyond helping parents, we wanted to get crafty on how to engage parents and their kids through unique social media content that leveraged the brand’s ethos and scrapbook design theme.