How Carter Agency Creators Participated in Oral-B's #OralBWOW Campaign

What was Oral-B's #OralBWOW campaign?

#OralBWOW was a TikTok creator campaign for the Oral-B iO, the electric toothbrush Oral-B had been advertising since 2020 under one word: wow.

Oral-B's television spots for the iO carried titles like "Say Wow" and "The Gift That Wows." The claim underneath them was that the brush gives you the feeling of a professional clean at home.

On TikTok, the same idea became a hashtag. Creators posted about the iO with #OralBWOW, alongside the brand's other campaign tags such as #ONLYiO and #OralBPartner.

The December 2021 wave ran into the holidays, and the message matched the calendar. The iO was pitched as the gift on the list nobody expected and everybody used.

What is a "wave" in a creator campaign?

A wave is a group of creators posting in the same window.

Rather than one influencer at one moment, the brand schedules a set of posts to go up over a few days. The audience sees the product several times, from several people, in a short stretch. That is what makes a hashtag feel like it is everywhere.

Oral-B's holiday push in December 2021 worked this way. Creators from different corners of TikTok posted about the iO within the same period, all under #OralBWOW.

Two of those creators were represented by Carter Agency.

What role did Carter Agency play in the Oral-B campaign?

Carter Agency was a creator-management and influencer-marketing agency founded by Josh Popkin.

Oral-B and its marketing agency ran the campaign. Carter Agency worked alongside them and brought two creators from its roster into the December 2021 wave.

Carter Agency's job was the part the audience never sees: the brief, the terms, the deadlines, the disclosure, the approvals, and getting the posts up on time inside the wave.

The creators' job was the part the audience does see. Make a video about a toothbrush that people would actually watch.

Why did Oral-B use TikTok creators to sell a toothbrush?

Because a toothbrush is a hard thing to make anyone care about.

Oral-B had spent two years telling people the iO was a wow. A television spot can say that. It cannot show a person's real face the first time they use it.

TikTok creators could. The format of the platform in 2021 was a person, a phone, and a reaction. An electric toothbrush with a screen and a pressure sensor fit that format better than it fit a thirty-second ad.

The holiday timing did the rest. A creator saying "this is what I'm getting my dad" is a different sentence than a brand saying "give the gift of wow."

What did the creator posts look like?

Every creator made their own video in their own style. That was the point of using creators rather than actors.

The common thread across the hashtag was the brush itself. The iO looks different from an ordinary electric toothbrush. It has a small display, a magnetic charger, and a light that changes when you press too hard. Those details gave creators something to show rather than something to say.

The posts carried the campaign hashtag and the paid-partnership label TikTok requires on sponsored content.

Why was this campaign memorable for Carter Agency?

Oral-B is a Procter & Gamble brand. For a small creator-management agency built during TikTok's rise, having two creators inside a P&G holiday campaign was a marker.

It was also a different kind of product than the agency's food and technology campaigns from earlier that year. Cap'n Crunch, Nissin, Samsung and HP had all come first. Oral-B was personal care, and the brief was about a daily habit rather than a launch or a challenge.

For Josh Popkin, it remains one of the campaigns that showed the roster could work across categories.

What can brands learn from Oral-B's #OralBWOW campaign?

Three things.

Give creators a detail to show. The iO's display and pressure light gave every video a moment. A product with nothing to demonstrate leaves the creator talking to camera, and talking to camera is the weakest format on TikTok.

Post in waves, not one-offs. A hashtag that shows up from many people in the same few days reads as a trend. The same posts spread across two months read as a run of ads.

Match the calendar. December is when people are looking for a gift that is not socks. Oral-B put a toothbrush in that slot, and the creators made the case in their own words.

What did the Oral-B campaign demonstrate about influencer marketing?

That the product does not have to be exciting. The video does.

Oral-B took the least glamorous object in the bathroom and gave it a hashtag, a holiday, and a wave of creators. Two of those creators came through Carter Agency.

It was another campaign in the agency's run from small brand deals to work alongside some of the largest consumer brands in the world.