Our toothbrushing habits offer a prime example of behavior that is at least seemingly irrational. If you ask people why they brush their teeth, most of them will tell you that their main purpose is doing so is to get particles of food out of the crevices of their teeth and thus combat decay germs. Tooth-paste producers accepted this explanation for many years and based their sales campaigns on it. Advertising men who made a study of our toothbrushing habits, however, came upon a puzzle. They found that most people brushed their teeth once a day, and at the most pointless moment possible in the entire twenty-four-hour day, from a dental hygiene standpoint. That was in the morning just before breakfast, after decay germs had had a whole night to work on their teeth from particles left from supper—and just before the consumption of breakfast would bring a new host of bacteria.
One advertising agency puzzling over this seemingly irrational behavior made a more thorough study of the reasons why we brush our teeth. It concluded we are motivated by differing reasons, based on our personality. Some people, particularly hypochondriacs, are really concerned abut those germs and are swayed by a “decay" appeal. (The hammering in recent years on all the wondrous anti-decay pastes has swollen the size of this group.) Another group, mostly extroverts, brush their teeth in the hope they will be bright and shiny. The majority of people, however, brush their teeth primarily for a reason that has little to do with dental hygiene. Or even their teeth. They put the brush and paste into their mouth in order to give their mouth a thorough purging, to get rid of the bad taste that has accumulated overnight. In short, they are looking for a taste sensation, as a part of their ritual of starting the day afresh. At least two of the major paste merchandisers began hitting hard at the appeal in 1955 and 1956. One promised a clean mouth taste” and the other proclaimed that its paste “cleans your breath while it guards your teeth.” (More recently one of these products got itself a new ad agency, as often happens, and the new mentor began appealing to the extrovert in us through the slogan, “You’ll wonder where the yellow went. . . “Good results are reported, which simply proves there is always more than one way to catch a customer.”)
Click here to watch a commercial on the possibilities that come with fresh breath.
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Tooth-paste makers doubled their sales in a few years, and one explanation is that they succeeded in large part by keeping a great number of people feeling uneasy about their teeth. They hammered at the wondrous new ways to kill bacteria and prevent decay. In the mid-fifties, Crest tooth paste containing a fluoride was unveiled with the typical modesty (for a tooth paste) as a “Milestone of Modern Medicine” comparable to the discovery of the means to control contagious diseases in the eighteenth century. The marketers themselves were less reverent in discussing among themselves. Advertising Age called the fluoride paste the latest gimmick of a series of big promises (ammoniated, chlorophyll, antienzyme) and added, “The feeling persists that public has responded appreciatively to every new therapeutic claim that has come done the pike in recent years. . . . The hope is that it will exhibit the usual alacrity at the sight of the fluorides.”
Click here to learn about harms to children in human testing of fluoride.
An interesting success story among the tooth pastes is that of Gleem, which on the surface had nothing spectacular to offer in the way of killing the dragons in our mouths. It had an ingredient called GL-70 that was apparently a competent bacteria killer, but as Fortune pointed out GL-70 seemed pretty puny as a peg for ad copy when compared to the more spectacular cleansers that had been ballyhooed. Gleem, however, had discovered a secret weapon. Investigators had uncovered the fact that many people—as a result of being subjected for years to the alarums of tooth-paste makers—felt vaguely guilty because they didn’t brush their teeth after every meal. Gleem began promising tooth salvation to these guilt-ridden people by saying it was designed for people who “can’t brush their teeth after every meal. “ (This, of course, includes most of the population.) Two years after it was introduced Gleem was outselling all but one rival dentifrice.
Click here for a solution to dangers from once-a-day morning brushing.
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