The Orabrush Story - The importance of a brilliant brand campaign.

So I first stumbled across Orabrush during my exam period - I was probably waiting to watch a video of a man laughing at a goat climbing a ladder or a poptart cat flying through space when I was made to watch one of Youtube's obligatory 'unskippable for the first ten seconds' ads. Except I liked the ad so much I watched the whole thing, and then rather than watching the video I had originally intended I watched more videos about the Orabrush and I was fascinated.

The video that distracted me so much and pervaded my waking thoughts for the next few days was 'Orabrush: The Movie'. The video dramatised the story of the Orabrush and I found the whole thing so interesting that I felt compelled to research the company. 


Like all great ideas, it began as a small marketing campaign thought up by the 75 year old inventor of the Orabrush, Robert Wagstaff, and a marketing student from a local university. It soon went viral and had 15 million Youtube views, Orabrush then went on to create more Youtube videos and even launched their own channel, which now has over 39 million views. Their campaign was soon picked up by a manager of Walmart in the local area who decided to stock their product. This then expanded from one Walmart store to all the Walmarts in Utah, and then to Walmart headquarters who asked for the Orabrush to be stocked nationally.

This, for me, highlights the impact that effective use of social media can have, Orabrush went from selling no units as a small business in Salt Lake City to selling millions of units worldwide purely through Youtube and other social media channels (they have had over 300,000 downloads of their iphone app, ‘the bad breath detector’). What had started out as a marketing campaign directed at the general public soon became an effective business to business campaign. The Orabrush story demonstrates the importance of an effective marketing campaign along with the growing power of social media and internet media channels.

Not to mention it has a guy dressed up like a giant tongue. What more could you possibly want from an advertising campaign?!

Watch the video that started it all: