The Sensitive Truth – Behind The Ongoing 20 Year Partnership Of Sensodyne and Grey

Enduring brand-agency partnerships are increasingly rare, yet Haleon’s Sensodyne and Grey continue to defy the trend—united by a global mission to tackle tooth sensitivity and improve lives worldwide.

Over the past two decades, the global marketing and communications strategy has focused on raising awareness of sensitivity, transforming Sensodyne into a category leader, and building a trusted, expert-recommended brand recognised worldwide.

According to Haleon’s Q1 report, Oral Health sales across EMEA and LATAM grew by single digits, while Denture Care saw double-digit growth.  Meanwhile, in North America, consumption of Sensodyne grew mid-single digits, outperforming the market and high single digits in APAC, supported by the rollout of the Sensodyne Clinical platform. 

It’s possibly hard to believe then that for a short period of time, the brand looked to move away from its focus on sensitivity and find new ways to bring consumers to Sensodyne. In 2022, with the hiring of GSK veteran Ignacio Notivol Delso as vice president and global business lead, Sensodyne and Pronamel, the focus of the partnership was firmly re-established. 

“It’s taken our relationship to another level,” claims Notivol Delso of working with the WPP-owned creative agency. “We both understand the business very well because of our model featuring real dentist testimonials around the world, unscripted.” 

He adds that while the strategy might “sound simple,” it requires a nuanced understanding of how to engage the dental community while delivering compelling brand communications on camera. It’s not for everyone, but in a world where influencers are dominating the media landscape and trading brand endorsements, it’s a form of storytelling audiences have become more familiar with. 

With a presence in over 160 markets, Sensodyne’s marketing formula must adapt to the varying levels of oral health maturity in each region, which is where Grey’s ability to deliver ‘Famously Effective’ work across its 432 offices in 96 countries, operating in 154 cities, is vital. 

Dentist testimonials have become Sensodyne’s most valuable marketing asset, credibly educating new users while reinforcing existing users’ real-world experience with the brand.

“Sensodyne is a brand fundamentally about being real, and in an age of AI, influence, celebrity misinformation and platform dominance, I think the idea of being real in that environment is a massive creative opportunity, and it's going to allow us to do some really interesting things,” says Conrad Persons, chief executive of Grey London. “It's harder than ever, but also more important than ever, to build trust. And this brand is so rooted in trust that building it, maintaining it, establishing it, becomes a really interesting, creative problem to solve.”

That creative vehicle currently runs in over 100 countries, with real local dentists, in local languages, producing more than 5000 executions to date.

Authentic Communications Across Local Markets

Earlier this year, the partnership’s model won The Marketing Society’s Global Excellence award for its local market strategy, fuelling growth. 

The organisation recognises that oral care is still not universal even though over half of its users now come through recommendations by dentists. This led to the development of its ‘Condition Awareness’ strategy, designed to address two key challenges: maximising dentist-patient conversations, or replicating them at scale through relevant mass communications to try and replicate the dentist experience and drive brand awareness. This was then adapted to be conveyed in colloquial languages. 

To ensure consistency across global communications, the brand uses a framework called ‘Be Real,’ explains Notivol Delso. This outlines the standard conversation and questions asked of dental experts. 

Despite that framework, Sensodyne doesn’t have a global cookie-cutter strategy, allowing it to make adjustments to educate consumers about the pain of sensitivity whenever it enters a new market. It also helps to showcase the brand’s ability to solve sensitivity over competitors, or drive its relevance by showcasing the benefits of various product innovations beyond the message of sensitivity. 

“You never know what’s going to come up,” admits Notivol Delso, reflecting on the unpredictability of expert-led content. “They can answer whatever they want. So it's an art of having clear principles, but then also being flexible and understanding what the footage is that we have, and how to edit it in the best possible way.” 

In Germany, the ‘Repair’ campaign drew a playful comparison between Sensodyne’s rapid relief and the city’s notoriously slow construction projects. Meanwhile, in Italy, the local market engaged an influencer to bring the dentist experience to consumers in the streets, and in China the team is bringing Sensodyne to life through its TikTok shop.

In some countries, regulations prohibit the use of real healthcare professionals in advertising, allowing actors to portray dentists instead. In markets like the UK, Haleon turns to scientists for commentary as the use of real healthcare professionals is against regulations. In those cases, as with the UK, Haleon turns to scientists for commentary instead. 

As the brand has grown and markets matured, the sensitivity awareness strategy has evolved beyond education alone, although the starting point remains on delivering education in underdeveloped markets for its pain products. 

In more developed markets, there is more nuance as engaging people with sensitivity is harder; ingrained misperceptions and beliefs have created behavioural apathy that needs to be broken. Driving relevance is key—not just in addressing sensitivity, but in highlighting the causes and showcasing Sensodyne’s solutions.

Persons says that for the partnership to be effective, there needs to be “a good dialogue” between local WPP and brand teams as well as at the global level to ensure everyone feels empowered, informed, and connected. 

“That’s becoming even more important as platform-specific insights differ so much by markets. In some markets, like China, you've got sophisticated environments where commerce, culture, and social are all in a super app, and understanding what works there might be very different from what works in a different market where the social media landscape, for example, is distinct,” he says. 

Persons adds his belief that understanding local digital platforms to deliver more effective work has been one of the most significant changes they have faced in recent years. 

Alongside its work with Grey, the brand also began to produce the Sensicast podcasts and partnered with Vox Creative in the US to produce a documentary that brought to life the experiences of the sensory community. 

Working Together

“It’s quite rare to have a relationship that feels bigger than any individual,” says Parsons, reflecting on the legacy of the 20-year-plus partnership spanning various lead marketers and agency leaders. “It's not my relationship, and it's not just Ignacio. It feels like it's a real relationship and partnership built over many decades that has somehow survived lots of changes.” 

Vital to that ongoing work is the understanding of each other’s businesses and the complexity of the needs of Haleon’s brands from market to market, requiring a major level of orchestration to meet local regulations and consistent brand guidelines. 

Persons also believes that “a level of radical transparency” is required between the two around what is working and what is not. Such an open dialogue changes the dynamic and prevents progress from any misunderstanding. “It’s always in service of betterment, it’s never personal,” he adds, citing the importance of pushback on occasion. 

Every brief begins with a conversation, as Notivol Delso believes that the process must work both ways, citing the internal belief held by some within Haleon that dentist testimonials wouldn’t work online or over social channels because they were seen as boring content that wouldn’t drive engagement. 

To test the theory, a discussion was held with the agency around what could be done with dental experts that would drive trust around their recommendations.

“It started with a conversation asking, ‘What can we do with this?’ and ‘Do you think we can solve this challenge?’ Then it became a global brief before we agreed to do a local pilot in the UK. We proved that these things were working. We were able to measure them and then we scaled up, and then the brief became bigger,” he continues. “It was a problem we solved together.” 

The long-running partnership is set to continue, with WPP recently retained on Haleon’s global creative roster.