Daily Brief:
- Colgate is celebrating resilience and self-confidence with a new campaign, “Your Smile Is Your Strength,” per details shared with Marketing Dive. The campaign launches today, March 19, and was created with agency VML.
- Video spots in 15- and 30-second cuts connect smiles to personal strength. The campaign spans linear TV, YouTube TrueView and Select, Disney connected TV and social media, including Meta via its Moment Maker package and TikTok Top Feed premium placements.
- Tie-ups with over 30 content creators and a partnership with mental health app Calm for custom meditation content round out the effort, which was inspired by research indicating that people — especially millennials — sometimes struggle to recognize their own strength.
Dive Insight:
Colgate is spotlighting the power of a smile for combating self-doubt for its new campaign. The effort is informed by data indicating that 78% of people sometimes forget to recognize their inner strength, per brand-commissioned research with Burson. For millennials — a target audience of Colgate’s campaign — that total jumps to 84%.
“Your Smile Is Your Strength” attempts to reach millennial caregivers who struggle with self-doubt while caring for loved ones by asserting that the most important smiles are the ones they give themselves, per release details. In a 30-second spot, a woman is seen caring for children and aging parents while also juggling a career. As the spot progresses, a voice over analyzes the purpose of a smile, explaining that “a smile is the shape resilience takes to keep you moving, because it isn’t just something on your face, it’s how you choose to face the world.”
The spot will also run as a 15-second cut. The campaign will span linear TV in both the general and U.S. Hispanic markets, Disney streaming ads and YouTube via the platform’s TrueView and Select ad formats. The effort will also run on TikTok with Top Feed premium placements, which places a brand’s video ad into the first in-feed ad slot, and via Meta’s Moment Maker package, which allows brands access to Meta’s existing video products, plus a comprehensive measurement solution, in a single buy to help drive audience saturation.
Additionally, Colgate’s campaign includes partnerships with over 30 creators, including WNBA star Aaliyah Edwards, who began sharing live content on Feb. 27 designed to amplify the brand’s message. The creator content will continue through the remainder of March. Colgate will also launch mindfulness content in partnership with Calm that will live on Colgate’s YouTube channel along with the Calm app.
Beyond Colgate, brands including Kind Snacks and Califia Farms have recently embraced self-care messaging with their marketing as a way to grow loyalty with shoppers, a strategy that could be welcomed as consumer stress hits a five-year high. In 2020, Colgate teamed with meditation app Headspace to offer weekly programming designed to support healthier daily habits and inspire consumers to smile more often.
Colgate parent Colgate-Palmolive reported a full-year net sales increase of 1.4% in 2025, according to an earnings statement. In Q4 2025, the company saw a net sales increase of 5.8%, and Colgate’s leadership in the toothpaste category continued with a global market share of 41.3% year-to-date during the period.
