Our experts have supported a pharmaceutical company to understand the impact their toothpaste promotional campaign (poster and TV) had on brand awareness and self-reported behavior.

A leading pharmaceutical manufacturer for innovative generics and OTC drugs and products. The client employs several promotional campaigns to increase awareness about its products among clients and healthcare providers.

The poster campaign aimed to increase awareness and knowledge of the importance of oral health maintenance with client products and determine a positive behavior change. The key verbal hygiene messages were to brush with fluoride toothpaste, use a pea-sized amount of it, brush for 3 min at least twice a day, and use it mainly when teeth have high sensitivity. The program consisted of a promotional poster being placed in all metro stations in large cities simultaneously against a national television campaign’s backdrop. The television campaign underlined the campaign’s key messages and encouraged the public to look after their teeth, share a picture of their smile, and report their success story as part of a competition.

An experimental/ control, pre-/post-design was used for the poster intervention, considering reported exposure or not to the television campaign. Cities assigned to the experimental group received the poster intervention during the television campaign period. The key messages formed the criteria of the data analyses. Those who received the poster intervention are classified as experimental and those who did not as controls. Exposure to the television campaign was determined based on an affirmative response to whether they watched the TV promotional campaign. χ2analyses were conducted on the nominal level frequency data to test for differences in responses between groupings. First, differences between experimental and control group responses to key questions at baseline, before intervention exposure, were tested. Differences in responses between baseline and post-test were then tested for in experimental and control children separately. The post-intervention data were then separated into those who did and those who did not see television campaigns, and within each of these groups, differences were checked for between experimental and control groups. The program’s impact was evaluated through a questionnaire that assessed the campaign’s key messages in relation to the frequency and duration of brushing teeth, the amount and type of toothpaste, etc.

There was a positive net effect of the poster intervention in all but one question. The percentage of people who reported using the recommended amount of toothpaste and brushing for 3 min appeared to have been further increased, having observed the television campaign.