It was just about a week ago when we discussed viral marketing. Today, we’ll talk about a good example of a successful viral promotion story: Orabrush.
The story begins with the promotional video of Orabrush, a tongue cleaner gizmo. When the promotion gained a big bang success with more than ten million hits, Orabrush had a new target: dogs.
Orapup dog’s tongue cleaners start shipping today after receiving more than $750,000 in pre-orders via Amazon, thanks to a viral-video campaign of its own.
The fans of Orabrush (or as the company calls them “Orabuddies”) said that Orabrush is very effective to overcome your dogs’ bad breath. Orabrush’s 78-year-old inventor, Dr. Bob Wagstaff, stated that using the Orapup was “an emotional bonding experience” with his puppy.
But, wait a minute. A tongue cleaner for dogs?
Yes! It seems silly, but dog lovers who’ve tried brushing their dogs’ teeth know that this ritual usually doesn’t go very well. Stucking the brush deeper into the dog’s mouth seems much more daunting for puppy lovers.
That’s where Orabrush’s “secret sauce” comes in. Orapup comes with a beef- or bacon-flavored sauce, with special enzymes and other bad breath-fighting ingredients. With this delicious “gravy”, your dogs will voluntarily lick it off the brush as they clean their tongues. Smart, huh? Dr. Bob also stated that the enzymes also help the beef or the bacon smell go away as well.
The dogs seem to love it, as shown by several eagerly licking it off the brushes in the video. The “secret sauce” has another benefit for the marketer. It is consumable. No matter how much Orabrush might suggest otherwise, people can use tongue brushes a long time without replacing them. However, they need to keep buying the sauce to use Orapup, so it’s a bit of a razor-blade model, with replacement batches of sauce now priced at $8.
The CEO of Orabrush, Mr. Jeff Davis said “People believe that we’re just lucky. However, there’s nothing lucky about going viral with the Orabrush model. We’re advertising. We’re using that ad to do the modeling and predict behavior on everything from pricing to messaging and packaging. It’s all done behind the scenes. We know from our relationship with Google that we get the highest amount of views for the lowest cost-per-view based on our advertising model.” Because of the success of this viral campaign, now Orapup becomes the latest “mini-trend” toward adapting products for humans to potentially bigger markets for pets as well.