Crest Leads The Way In Integrated Brand Marketing

The big news isn’t that Crest is launching a new product. The news is how it is launching its new product.

Crest Weekly Clean Intensive Cleaning Paste – a new paste designed to give you that “just went to the dentist” feeling – will hit the shelves in September, but P&G has already started sending samples to bloggers and select online parental groups. Apparently they have decided to forgo a traditional launch campaign in favor of one that targets the more influential online community. Apparently, Crest sent a survey to more than 600,000 moms in late August through P&G’s Vocalpoint buzz-marketing program.

According to the product’s spokeswoman – Allison Yang – television will be relatively light, consisting of five second tags on ads for other crest products. Instead, their research told them it’s a product “people talk about.” And what better way to get people talking than online – right?

So read between the lines. Crest – one of P&G’s biggest media spenders with almost $237 million in ’07 media spend, is backing away from expensive television in favor of creating a consumer-driven online platform for Weekly Clean. If this doesn’t tell you how important it is to create an integrated communications program online, before using more traditional media – nothing will…..