Publicis, which won the $200 million Crest account away from Saatchi & Saatchi back in 2009, has chosen an unexpected spokesperson in the latest stage of its ongoing effort to get kids to brush their damn teeth: William Shakespeare.
The Bard himself stars in this new campaign, which started airing during the Olympics. He wants to get a certain Sarah to pay more attention to her dental health so she won’t have to stay home from school.
Wait…
One might assume that most high school/middle school kids would prefer to catch up on social media rather than discussing The Bard. Plus, there are so many film versions of Hamlet to choose from! But then Shakespeare’s work does have more than its share of sex and violence, and high school kids care more about grades and college admissions than anything else, right?
Dennis Legault, the client’s North American oral health marketing director, told AdAge yesterday that kids “still miss school because of various dental things going on. So it is broadly affecting the population.”
This will be a long-term effort for P&G, which wants to tie more of its marketing campaigns back to public good advocacy efforts like preventing kids from scoring lower on standardized tests because their teeth hurt.
The work vaguely reminds us of Erich & Kallman’s historical, star-studded debut campaign for Chick-Fil-A. Michaelangelo would definitely need to brush his teeth after eating an egg and cheese sandwich in the Sistene Chapel, but we’re pretty sure they just gargled some water and called it a day in the 16th century.
Dental care was pretty awful back then, BTW.