Advertising: In A Battle Of Toothpastes, It’s Information Vs. Emotion

PROCTER & GAMBLE is fighting to be tops in toothpaste again.

Colgate-Palmolive’s campaign to promote the Colgate Total brand features the actress Brooke Shields in her real-life role as a mother.

The Crest Pro-Health campaign focuses on health benefits.

In a bid to regain the sales lead from its rival Colgate-Palmolive, the Procter & Gamble Company has introduced Crest Pro-Health, which claims to deliver in one tube everything a consumer could possibly want in a toothpaste.

Procter is backing Pro-Health with a $100 million advertising campaign, its largest spending ever for a new dental product. The campaign, from the longtime Crest agency Saatchi & Saatchi in New York, part of the Publicis Groupe, takes a clinical bent; one TV ad features a real dentist, and another an actor portraying a researcher.

Pro-Health is a direct challenge to the strong-selling Colgate Total line introduced in 1997 by the Colgate-Palmolive Company. Total was the first toothpaste to claim that it fights gingivitis, a benefit that let Colgate inch ahead of Crest for the first time in decades.

Colgate is fighting back with record advertising spending of its own, for a campaign from the Y & R division of Young & Rubicam Brands, part of the WPP Group. The campaign, which features the actress Brooke Shields in her real-life role as a mother, represents the first time that Colgate Total has used a celebrity in a campaign.

By virtue of sheer spending power, people are going to be thinking more about toothpaste than they have in a long time, said Gary M. Stibel, chief executive at the New England Consulting Group. He compared the battle to the free-for-all in the car insurance market among brands like Allstate, Geico, Progressive and State Farm.

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The battle of the toothpaste brands illustrates the intensifying warfare in consumer-product categories that are competitive and crowded. A CVS store in Manhattan was carrying 18 types of Colgate Total recently, and Crest Pro-Health comes in several sizes, in mint and cinnamon flavors.

In many instances, buyers perceive little difference among such products, so ads often try to entertain consumers or play up brand image while playing down actual attributes.

In this case, Procter and Colgate-Palmolive seek to persuade consumers that there are significant distinctions between their toothpastes that could potentially affect health.

In contrast to promising simply that its product will help prevent cavities, Procter is claiming that Pro-Health is the only toothpaste that protects against gingivitis, plaque, cavities, sensitivity and stains — and freshens breath, too.

Because of the many health claims, it made good sense to have dental experts explain the product in the ads, said Mariana Sanchez, senior vice president at Saatchi & Saatchi. Product packages and some ads also show the caduceus, the medical symbol of snakes entwined on a winged staff.

The target customer is quite an information seeker, said Matt Barresi, Procters marketing director for oral health care in North America.

The campaign notes that Crest Pro-Health has been accepted by the American Dental Association as being effective at fighting cavities, gingivitis and plaque, as well as reducing sensitivity in teeth and helping to whiten them. To obtain the A.D.A. seal, a marketer must pay for a scientific review.

An A.D.A. seal set Crest apart more than five decades ago, when Procter introduced it as the first fluoride toothpaste clinically proved to be, as the association declared, of significant value in fighting cavities, when used in a conscientiously applied program of oral hygiene and regular professional care.

Soon after its introduction in 1955, Crest became the subject of one of the most popular ad campaigns of the 20th century, from what was then the Benton & Bowles agency. It featured the artwork of Norman Rockwell and carried the theme, Look, mom — no cavities.

The theme of the campaign for Pro-Health, by comparison, is Healthy, beautiful smiles for life.

Both Colgate and Procter are flooding dental offices with product samples and informational materials, in the hope of encouraging favorable word of mouth and pushing sales in the slow-growing American toothpaste business.

New advertising for Crest Pro-Health will feature real people who have tried and liked the product. Weve gotten an unprecedented amount of testimonials from consumers, Mr. Barresi said.

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Rather than focus on science, the Colgate Total ads with Ms. Shields use glamour and emotion, a shift from the products previous campaign, which was centered on its germ-fighting prowess.

In commercials for Colgate Total that began in October on TV and online, viewers see Ms. Shields nuzzling and playing with two children as soft music plays in the background. Ms. Shields, a former model who has a history with Colgate, having appeared in a print ad as a child, says: Having a healthy smile is important to me. Not just as an actress, but as a mom. (The children in the spots, however, are actors, not Ms. Shieldss own.)

One online showing of the commercial, on the Yahoo home page in late October, received a surprisingly strong response, said Suzan F. Harrison, vice president for United States marketing at Colgate-Palmolive. The Yahoo home page was visited 94 million times that day by 16 million unique visitors, she said, and traffic to the Colgate Total site (colgatetotal.com) jumped 2,000 percent.

Crest Pro-Health is already ranked sixth among top-selling toothpaste brands in the United States, according to Information Resources Inc., a market research company. For the 12 weeks that ended Nov. 5, Crest Pro-Health had sales of $13.7 million, the data showed.

But Colgate-Palmolive appeared to be protecting its franchise. In the same period, Colgate Total sales jumped 13.8 percent, to $24 million, compared with the same period a year ago, according to Information Resources.

(Its information does not include sales figures from Wal-Mart, the largest American retailer, which does not provide data to outside researchers.)

At least one dentist approves of both brands. Mark S. Wolff, a professor at the New York University College of Dentistry, called the toothpastes essentially the same and said their claims were valid.

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