• by Les Luchter , April 7, 2025

Thousands of recent visitors to a major botanical garden marveled at HD panels displaying a purportedly new flower species. Scanning a code on the panels brought them to two videos.

“In early 2025, a new flower species was discovered,” one video began as the screen showed what looked like microscopic images of a new pink plant beginning to bloom, “an extraordinary phenomenon growing wild and free.”

The camera then zoomed out slowly, and viewers realized they were looking at… bristles on a much-used toothbrush.

“Dentists recommend changing your toothbrush every three months,” concluded the ad for Colgate India. It appeared with a similar video through Mumbai’s Veermata Jijabai gardens and zoo for five days last month.

Both videos state that “one in two Indians use a flowering toothbrush that can harm their oral health.”

After watching the videos, consumers could use a link to order a new toothbrush. 

The videos have also been running as standalone films on social media channels, with plans for influencer marketing, out-of-home ads and scannable posters, Juneston Mathana, executive creative director of Ogilvy Mumbai’s WPP@CP agency, told Marketing Daily.

“The zoo got a lot of footfalls, and the location of our panels was unmissable,” said Mathana. “This lush green patch of wildlife in the center of a concrete jungle draws crowds from all demographics, (so) It was a befitting location to showcase a new species of flower.” 

"The biggest challenge wasn’t awareness, it was action," Gunjit Jain, executive vice president, marketing at Colgate-Palmolive (India), said in a statement. "People know they should replace their toothbrush regularly, but they don’t. We had to break that cycle, not with facts alone, but with an experience that made them feel the urgency."

 

“The real task was making them experience the realization for themselves,” added Mathana. “Once they made the connection,” he said, a shift in behavior shift was possible.

The name of Colgate’s new flower, incidentally, is the “Indianis Dentris.”