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Strategy Reviews

Colgate India Social Media Play: Using digital as an extension to traditional marketing

We take a look at how Colgate India uses social media to drive home messages about dental hygiene, white teeth and beautiful smiles.

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Jagruti Verma
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Colgate India social media strategy

We take a look at how Colgate India uses social media to drive home messages about dental hygiene, white teeth and beautiful smiles.

Colgate India has been in the business on pushing people into taking care of their oral health and dental hygiene for several years now. Over time, they have transitioned from using television to air white smiles and put forth questions about salty toothpastes to creating digital infrastructure for virtual dentistry, helping people get video consults amidst the pandemic. Though they have been on social media platforms for a long time, Colgate India has recently begun posting more, infusing a fresh breath into their communication — as an attempt to reach more people. We take a look.

Colgate India Social Media Strategy

Colgate India is pretty new to the social media game if one were to look at the frequency of their posts. They have a fairly large audience on Facebook and Instagram. Compared to that, on Twitter, the account's reach is limited. However, leveraging the presence of the celebrities associated with them has helped them exist and stay relevant on the platform. There, it's more about having a handle that can be tagged and/or used to drive people to links about products. On Facebook and Instagram, they do get quite good engagement, shows data recorded by Qoruz.

Facebook: 2.7M Likes
Twitter: 615 Followers
Instagram: 13.9K Followers
Prominent Hashtags: #SmileKaroAurShuruHoJao, #ColgateSmile, #Colgate, #WorldSmileDay #SmileSeKaroDiwaliRoshan #OralHealthMonth

Data, as captured by Qoruz, suggests that Colgate India gets about 41 Likes on average for their Facebook posts. Average Comments are about 3, the number of average Shares stands at 6. On Instagram, they get an average of 293 Likes, 9 Comments, and 2.8K Views. Their engagement rate on Instagram is about 2.21%.

Colgate India Facebook Data
Facebook
Colgate India Instagram Data
Instagram

People mostly engage with Colgate India via Likes on their social media pages. Most of the conversations and posts by Colgate India are about Healthcare (52%). Other prominent content topics include Family & Parenting (17.3%), Food & Drink (11.6%), Beauty (10.5%) and Dance (8.7%).

Colgate India Content Affinity

Celebrity Influence

Celebrities have been driving the Colgate India narrative over the years in various forms — the same trend is reflected on social media too. One can see brand ambassadors sharing the campaigns they feature in as well as Colgate amplifying the video ads made to promote the various products in their portfolio. In recent cases, faces such as Kiara Advani, Ayushmann Khurrana and Ranveer Singh can be seen on their profile.

In an awareness campaign featuring Singing Dentist Milad Shadrooh, actors Manish Paul and Pranitha Subhash, and fitness trainer Yasmin Karachiwala, Colgate India had leveraged the powers of digital to reach more people — and create conversations around the importance of brushing teeth regularly and in the right way. The piece was called #BrushThemWell.

Trending Conversations

Colgate India is very selective about the trending conversations they join in. The exclusivity helps them ensure they only partake when it's something that's relevant to their brand identity. This is especially true for trending formats — they have participated in only two such major waves in the last few months. Recently, when MS Dhoni announced his retirement, Colgate India had posted a tribute post for him.

Festivities & Celebrations

Colgate India often puts up posts for major Indian festivals. Here, they get a chance to wish people and stay involved in their lives. Even though the frequency of posts is less, they are able to bring alive connections on celebratory occasions, spreading cheers and smiles around.

Brand Associations

Colgate India was the official smile partner to various IPL teams last year. They had shared the good news with the help of a social media creative. On their part, teams such as Kolkata Knight Riders had shared pictures of happy players — conjuring up imagery that was hard to resist engaging with. Colgate India had shared it in approval.

Also Read: Prega News Social Media Strategy: Understanding the role influencers & multi-lingual content

On the product innovation end, Colgate India has a tie-up with Barbie wherein they sell toothpaste and toothbrushes that are co-branded. They had leveraged social media to announce the partnership, share discounts and amplify the availability of such products at online stores.

People & Stories

Colgate India often shares stories of people who are not directly associated with the brand. They use their platform and reach to amplify these stories — Stories that matter. They also use their social media presence to talk about the various initiatives by Colgate India that are run for the betterment of the public, especially the youth and students.

In certain cases, these stories are told in partnership with publishers such as Zee and India Today. Recently, they had roped in a sand art creator to help raise awareness about oral care and hygiene — the communication was amplified with social media posts.

Digital Innovations

Like most brands, Colgate India too had to innovate to stay relevant in the lives of their consumers through the pandemic. To this extent, they innovated in the e-consulting space and bridged the gap between people who needed oral care and those with the means to help — dentists.

On the occasion of World Smile Day in October 2020, Colgate India launched a campaign that included an AR filter for people to try and spread the word. It was a part of their larger campaign — an innovation that helped them reach more people with their narrative around smiles.

Corporate Communications

The brand uses their social media presence, primarily Twitter, to put up messages that are about the company and while they are meant for the general public, they may or may not be relevant to their consumers. These are used to share important notices as well ad build the corporate image of the brand. Here, they also highlight on-ground workshops conducted by the company as an attempt to connect with more people outside the domain of the virtual worlds — in the pre-pandemic world.

Colgate is a legacy brand that is evidently trying to strengthen its social media presence, especially in the wake of being hit by the pandemic. They are putting up posts more regularly and going beyond the usual video/TVC communication they have been doing for years. Trending formats, though slowly and cautiously, are making their way into their brand communication on social media — transforming their digital presence in a significant way.

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