• by Nina Lentini , Staff Writer @Nina_Lentini, March 6, 2019

Quip nailed the toothbrush subscription model. Now, it wants to be your overall oral health brand and is even selling dental insurance. That’s crazy, right? 

Apparently not. 

“It’s a major jump but we are willing to take risk,” Elliot Friar (above, right), brand marketing manager, told MediaPost’s Brand Insider Summit audience in Austin on Wednesday, adding, “It’s important to visit the dentist.” 

The brand is smart enough to have service elements baked into the core product, he said, referring to dental checkup reminders as well as new brush heads. “We’re improving oral health. We email consistently, we have a large dental professional network.”

Quip just launched a toothbrush for kids. One of the drivers was the understanding through research that ”kids feel proud to use something their parents are using,” said Friar. “Kids are excited to get it in the mail. We only had to change the handle to add a bit of grip to it.”

“Kids feel grownup using [a toothbrush] without childish images. It’s more about their psychology and building good habits.”

There is no rush to put marketing spend behind the product just now because, as he explained, “We’re selling the whole family on Quip. We make sure the parent also uses Quip. We’re messaging on channels that have audiences that tend to be parents.“

The product’s launch crashed Quip’s website yesterday, music to a marketer’s ears.

“The broader plan for Quip is building a product that lasts a lifetime. We have a mission of improving the entire oral care routine. We want to make oral care simple, affordable, and enjoyable.” 

One of the brand’s best-performing verticals is podcasts, said Friar. “It comes down to authenticity and making sure, creative-wise, you are letting the podcaster riff off what they think of your product. Their audience will care about the same thing. It’s not like TV, where the commercial is disconnected from the show. With a podcast, you hear a commercial [but] it’s the same person delivering it.”