Haleon India's Bhawna Sikka: 3 out of every 5 Indians suffer from oral health problems
Bhawna Sikka, Category Lead - Oral Healthcare, Haleon India discusses how Sensodyne's #BeSensitiveToOralHealth campaign is urging individuals to "Take the First Step," emphasizing simple daily actions for oral health alongside broader health practices.
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Oral diseases impact nearly half the world's population, surpassing the burden of most common non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Data confirms that 3 out of every 5 Indians suffer from oral health problems - 1 out of every 2 Indians suffer from tooth sensitivity and 1 out of 3 have gum related issues. Therefore, the brand continues its endeavour to build awareness and drive further household penetration.
According to the WHO Oral Health Status Report 2022, nearly 60 percent of Indians grapple with oral health issues. However, only 5 percent of Indians seek proactive dental care, with no prevalent dental insurance. A key driver of this negligence is the lack of education on oral health.
Sensodyne's #BeSensitiveToOralHealth campaign is urging individuals to "Take the First Step," emphasizing simple daily actions for oral health alongside broader health practices.
Through its ad and other assets, Sensodyne highlights the disparity between routine efforts to safeguard overall health and the oversight of oral health, encouraging a paradigm shift towards comprehensive well-being.
The 15-second brand films eloquently underscore the contrast between the attention given to various facets of overall health—through lifestyle modifications such as embracing green tea, mindful eating, yoga, and walking—while regrettably neglecting oral health. Simultaneously, it underscores the imperative of proactive oral care through modest adjustments to daily routines, such as selecting the appropriate.
Bhawna Sikka, Category Lead - Oral Healthcare, Haleon India discusses the genesis of the campaign, influencer marketing and brand collaborations.
Edited excerpts:
Can you explain the need of the ‘BeSensitiveToOralhealth’ campaign?
BeSensitiveToOralhealth’is not just a campaign but a mission and an attempt to building awareness about common signs of oral health issues. We started work on this last year on World Oral Health Day, by taking up various initiatives to offer greater access to dental care around World Oral Health Day. It's commonly known as oral health is gateway to overall health, yet we only limit it to the morning brushing and nothing is done beyond that.
We believe that through education and ensuring access to quality dental services, we can inspire proactive steps towards better oral health among Indians. Also, the dentist-to-patient ratio in India currently at 2:10,000, which is very severe.
Haleon's commitment to its consumers is reflected in its purpose, ‘Delivering Better Everyday Health with Humanity’. Sensodyne has remained focused on bringing trusted science through its portfolio of pastes and soft brushes.
Everything that we can do in terms of liberating people of sensitivity, come together when we talk about ‘BeSensitiveToOralHealth’.
Firstly, our intent is to educate right because when people know better, they do better. For example, Sensodyne makes people aware about the sharp sensation that they feel on their teeth, its sensitivity and need to be treated; educates people about noticing bleeding while brushing to telling them that their enamel can get affected if they have a lot of coffee throughout the day,
Secondly, Sensodyne wants to enable people to embrace oral hygiene. A lot of Sensodyne's communication this time was centred around not just educating people, but also about teaching them to take the first step right.
Take us through Sensodyne’s influencer marketing strategy and collaborations for this campaign.
We collaborated with food influencer Pooja Dhingra. Since she is a pastry chef, we realized that she will be a credible person to talk about how oral health could be impacted. Then we also had Pooja Makhija, a renowned nutritionist talking about overall health, nutrition and emphasizing why oral health is a part of maintaining overall health. And, we also partnered with Soha Ali Khan.
For Sensodyne, the most important part of this whole campaign was building access. Since there are only two dentists per 10,000 population, Sensodyne wanted to create campaigns which would clarify where and how people could manage their oral checkups.
This is where we make sure that every single piece of communication that went out under ‘BeSensitiveToOralHealth’ Communication ended by giving consumer the opportunity to meet a dentist. Hence, we gave a bar code in all the print materials and a link in all the digital platforms to help the viewer find a dentist. These viewers can get complimentary dental check-ups in more than 80 cities across the country. For this, we partnered with Practo.
We also tied up with almost 7500 chemists across cities in India. This year, we are connecting with 5000+ dentists, 140+ dental colleges and nearly 7500 chemists across India leading to over 3 lakh oral health check-ups of sufferers.
Can you elaborate on Sensodyne’s collaboration with Spotify?
We have leveraged content specific advertising on Spotify during playlists. Suppose people are listening to a yoga or a running playlist; here through ads Sensodyne can communicate with the listener and encourage them to take care of their oral health as well.
Sensodyne has utilized different methods on Spotify to communicate about oral hygiene; they were integrated depending on the kind of playlist people were tuning in to.
We have been using sleeping playlists because a lot of people listen to music during late night. We often hear ads on how sleeping at the right time is important and how 8 hours of sleep is necessary for beauty which made us realize that we could use contextual advertising and promote brushing for two minutes before sleep in these playlists.
