The Ad Council has joined The Partnership for Healthy Mouths, Healthy Lives, a coalition of more than 35 dental health organizations, to launch Kids’ Healthy Mouths, a joint national multimedia public service campaign designed to teach parents and children about the importance of oral health and the simple ways they can prevent oral disease. The English and Spanish-language public service ads are being distributed to media outlets nationwide.
Created pro bono by ad agencies Grey Group and Wing in New York, the new Kids’ Healthy Mouths public service campaign is aimed at parents and caregivers throughout the United States, particularly those from low-income families, and stresses the importance of brushing for 2 minutes twice a day.
According to the Ad Council, the English and Spanish-language TV, radio, print, outdoor, and digital PSAs poke fun at the number of inane things children spend their time doing and highlight that it only takes 2 minutes, twice a day to help maintain a healthy mouth and prevent future oral pain.
An additional English and Spanish-language PSA features Elmo from Sesame Street singing to kids, reminding them to “Brushy Brush” their teeth every day as part of Sesame Street’s Healthy Teeth, Healthy Me campaign. The new campaign also includes a PSA featuring “Tooth,” the Tooth Fairy from Rise of the Guardians, the upcoming film from DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc.
All of the PSAs direct parents and caregivers to a new website, 2min2x.org (which is available in English and Spanish, and includes a mobile version), where parents and children can watch entertaining videos and listen to music—all 2 minutes in length—while children are brushing their teeth. Campaign media partners, including Cartoon Network and My Kazoo!, donated snippets of videos and songs for the site. A series of social media strategies will also engage parents and children, including messaging on Facebook and Twitter, as well as a dedicated YouTube channel, where the 2-minute content will be featured.
This campaign is the first in the Ad Council’s 70 year history to address oral health. The Ad Council is distributing the new PSAs to more than 33,000 media outlets nationwide, and the ads will run in advertising time and space entirely donated by the media. Several media companies have committed to supporting the PSAs prior to their launch.
