“We created over a MILLION infectious smiles for Pepsodent Ghana on World Oral Health Day, 2025,” – EchoHouse Africa.
While the above statement is seemingly simple, it summarizes the work we have put in over the last couple of months to bring our “Get In Line” agenda for 2025 to our executions. After years of consistently celebrating World Oral Health Day in Ghana, Pepsodent Ghana was eager to create its own consumer engagement property that elevates its celebration of the day to amplify its brand and drive home the importance of oral hygiene on World Oral Health Day.
This challenge led to months of internal research and engagement to create a property that will perfectly extend Pepsodent’s age-old brand message – “Every Smile Matters.” The result was the creation of “Smile Ride,” a nationwide campaign that provided a good mix of experiential, digital, production, and influencer marketing, all geared towards one goal – creating a sea of beaming faces across Ghana.
At the core of the success of the Smile Ride was our comprehensive, 360 approach, championing on-ground activations, and digital and influencer-led online engagements. Our “Get In Line” agenda, which is a philosophy centered on aligning all our 360 capabilities for maximum impact for our brand partners, proved to be the driving force behind this success.
Get In Line: What Collaboration Looks Like
This ambitious project served as a true test of our 2025 agenda, “Get In Line.” For the Smile Ride, “Get In Line” translated into a seamless integration of our diverse capabilities. The successful execution demanded a collaborative effort from the influencer management, experiential, digital, and production teams. Each team, working in sync with one objective in mind, contributed their unique expertise to curate and deliver a cohesive and impactful campaign for Pepsodent Ghana.
Smile Ride: Arriving At The Big Idea
When creating any form of brand asset, the major deciding factor is how it reinforces or extends the already existing key brand message. In Pepsodent’s case, the brand has built its identity on celebrating the smiles of its consumers. That bright smile serves as a testimony to Pepsodent’s offering. That guided the creative team in ultimately arriving at Smile Ride. What Smile Ride does is create a unique brand opportunity for Pepsodent to demonstrate its brand promise in real time.
Smile Ride: On-The-Road
The Smile Ride was simultaneously activated in all 16 regions of Ghana on World Oral Health Day, bringing the message of oral health directly to the everyday Ghanaian. It involved the logistical task of onboarding commercial vehicles in various cities and towns to give a free ride to commuters during the early morning rush hour. Once commuters boarded the various commercial buses, trained representatives engaged them in oral health care. That’s not all, this also provided an opportunity for Pepsodent to carry out a nationwide sampling exercise. This needed feedback gave Pepsodent direct comments from the users of its various product offerings. But as the name suggested, “Smile Ride”, commuters were not just bored with oral healthcare tutorials but also got entertained by a number of creators who were embedded in the various vans.
Smile Ride: The Influencer Plant
The culture of consuming digital content has travelled to various parts of the country, and as it has become part of the entertainment culture of Ghanaians, it also became a feature of the Smile Ride. Influencers and content creators who create content on comedy, dance and other humorous outputs joined various buses. Creators such as Dancegod Lloyd, Israel Laryea, Kojo Junior, Danny GFC, among others, were on various vans engaging the commuters and creating several smile moments. These unmatched smile moments became cherished moments that were captured for content by the influencers and also for Pepsodent’s digital accounts.
Smile Ride: On Digital
The digital space has become a key marketing avenue for brands, creating another channel to reinforce marketing communications. To bring the joy of the Smile Ride online, we activated Instagram’s Add Yours feature, which was used by commuters to check in while they were on the Smile Ride. This created a chain of smiles online, and it also led to the key content agenda that was executed by the production team and ensured that content from Smile Ride was authentic and engaging, and reached the right audience online.
Smile Ride: Story Told In Content
The Smile Ride was a content mine for Pepsodent. Our production team, assigned to various buses, told the story of a brand bringing its key messaging to life, getting real feedback on how the brand has been a part of their lives, and them becoming willing advocates of the brand. This narrative, driven by our production team, highlighted the longstanding trust Ghanaians have in Pepsodent when it comes to oral care.
Smile Ride: A Million Infectious Smiles
The Smile Ride’s success goes beyond focusing on marketing metrics. It created a tangible impact on the lives of Ghanaians, promoting oral health awareness and celebrating a sense of community that is usually witnessed on commercial buses. What we did with Smile Ride by activating our “Get In Line” agenda, which indicates a cross-functional collaboration, ended up delivering a million smiles, leaving a lasting legacy of joy and healthy habits across Ghana, both offline and online.