Even though the camera wasn't so candid, television still gave GoSmile a reason to grin.
The launch of a successful long-form DRTV campaign 12 months ago helped the tooth-whitening company start a growing continuity program, says Chris Valletta, senior director for business development at New York-based GoSmile Inc.
“Our brand traditionally lives in the high-end prestige sector of the beauty category,” Valletta says. “With the evolution of the direct response industry providing the opportunity for more prestige brands like Bare Escentuals and Philosophy to enter this landscape, it provided an excellent chance to bring a product mix that traditionally has been sold on Madison Avenue to Middle America as an affordable luxury.”
Marilyn Davis, executive vice president of Cmedia, which helped GoSmile develop its DRTV campaign, notes that the health and beauty niche is where she's seeing a predominance of club and continuity programs utilizing direct response television. “Anywhere there's [a potential for] repeat orders, it makes sense,” she says.
DRTV works for products such as Go Smile and other Cmedia clients like mineral makeup marketer Bare Escentuals, she says, because the format allows ample time to tell a story — not only about the product's features and benefits, but why signing up for a club makes sense financially and for convenience' sake.
“You need to educate consumers who may perhaps be resistant to clubs and [not understand] why they are of value,” Davis adds.
If a club is being marketed via DRTV, the challenge of making sure customers understand what they're actually signing up for always exists. Davis says full disclosure should be addressed in the creative, and backed up on the customer service side, when customers place orders either by phone or online. The latter channel is steadily growing as a response mechanism for DRTV campaigns; for many Cmedia clients, 30% to 50% of revenue is generated online, and Web addresses are displayed as prominently as 800 numbers on air.
GoSmile got its start in 2002. Prior to DRTV, promotion for the tooth-whitening product was organic, relying heavily on guerrilla tactics. “We're not a company like Crest or Colgate that has a billion-dollar ad budget,” Valletta says.
Public relations and event sponsorship was used, and the product often was distributed in gift bags given to celebrities at red-carpet events.
What really kicked the business into gear was an appearance by company founder Dr. Jonathan Levine on the ABC morning chat show “The View” in 2002 to talk about trends in aesthetic dentistry. As his wife Stacey Levine watch from the audience while hosts Star Jones and Joy Behar tried the product, she realized the potential for a new company. That inkling was reinforced by the thousands of calls from people who'd seen the show and wanted to buy the product.
GoSmile rolled out as a dot-com (www.gosmile.com), and soon after, retail relationships were formed with cosmetics chain Sephora as well as high-end department stores like Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom.
While lower price-point products such as Crest Whitestrips are competition, Valletta says GoSmile focuses on “lifestyle rather than just results,” comparing GoSmile with Starbucks and Crest to Folgers.
Via DRTV, the company's maintenance product (used after teeth are whitened) is sold as a continuity item. This line is sold, as is the whitening system (used every six months) on infomercials and Home Shopping Network.
The ability to build a story on DRTV, explaining the importance of one's smile to a beauty regimen, appealed to the firm. “We lived in cosmetic retail space for so long that naturally we assumed our customers were women,” Valletta says. “We didn't know so many men purchased our product until we did our infomercial.”
Indeed, 30% of the customer base is male, which explains why SpikeTV works so well for GoSmile. “Who would've ever thought that the same network that shows WWE Wrestling and Ultimate Fighting would be one of our top performers?” Valletta asks. “It's been eye-opening, to say the least.”
GoSmile's typical customer is a “savvy, sophisticated and stylish person age 18 to 49 who wants efficacy and fast results in products that fit his/her lifestyle,” Valletta says. “He/she is well educated with a bachelor's degree, and is a professional, often in a white-collar occupation such as banker, lawyer, actor or model.”
Household income averages $90,000 and up. Most users own a home in an urban area and have Internet access.
As the continuity program has been in place for less than a year, Valletta still considers it in an testing phase. “It represents a good percentage of business, but we're still revising the program, looking at product, offer and how much product is sent. We're still tweaking.”
At present, the Web site offer for Club GoSmile is for a maintenance program of 60 daily touch-up ampoules (small vials) of the GoSmile formula, and tubes of the AM and PM toothpaste for $29.99 plus $5.99 shipping per month.
GoSmile recently began a loyalty program with Loyalty Lab. “This will give us a foundation for CRM,” Valletta says. “We see it as a way to interact.”
For every $1 “Frequent Smiler” members spend on GoSmile products, they will get “10 smiles,” which can be accumulated and used for credit toward future purchases on the Web site. With no real promotion yet, a few thousand people signed up in the first month, just by reading about it on the site.
Valletta feels that eventually the Web and e-commerce will replace long-form infomercials. He sees a shift to shorter spots that can push people to the site for more information, or to watch longer spots at their convenience.
