Marketing

Crest was founded in 1955 and the first brand that could fight cavities. It was the leading brand in toothpaste for decades. Only brand like Coca-Cola or Disney have been on the top for such long. But now Crest is losing its leadership position to Colgate. Colgate is also a great company which launched an innovative toothpaste product that seemed to do everything: fight cavities, tartar, plaque and bad breath. And the name for this amazing toothpaste is Colgate’s Total, which I am using it right now. And Colgate’s Total steal a lot of market share from Crest.

Toothpaste market is a quite mature market, and any growth a brand will experience comes at the expense of another brand. Crest kept up with this competition by creating the whitening toothpaste segment, and Crest Whitestrips was first launched in 2001. Crest attracted a lot of customers who wanted to whiten their teeth with relatively lower price. And it was a huge success for Crest.

Colgate’s answer to Whitestrips was Simply White, a brush-on style of whitener that offered similar benefits. Also, Colgate added three line extensions, and by the definition learned in class, line extension is to add new products to existing line. Colgate launched Total Fresh Stripe, Total Plus Whitening, and Total Plus Advanced Fresh to its Total toothpaste line.

The battle is still going on. And I think these two companies really need to examine the various external trends in the marketplace to identify new strategies for building market share. And they must evaluate the consumer needs and expectations to detect new product opportunities for the long term.