What’s Captifying the World: Move over skincare—‘Pearly Whiters’ are turning to oral beauty to get social ready

Covid-19 altered the beauty and personal care habits of many—a year marked by at-home and DIY self-care.

Now, with restrictions easing, beauty interest is soaring again, but it’s not all about makeup and fragrance. Oral care is the emerging category shaking up the beauty scene, with the global market expected to reach $49.5 billion by 2028.

Oral care bites into the beauty industry

Captify analyzed billions of searches to understand how oral care is disrupting the beauty industry as social scenes begin to pick up. Our data uncovered a 48% uplift in searches around ‘Oral Beauty’ from Oct-Dec 20’ vs Jan-April 21’ and identified a new and emerging audience of ‘Pearly Whiters’.

Interestingly, hygiene isn’t the biggest driver of search interest. These ‘Pearly Whiters’ are beauty fanatics, focused on aesthetics as they prepare to ditch their facemasks and get ready for in-person gatherings.

Key drivers of oral beauty search interest among ‘Pearly Whiters’:

‘Aesthetics’ is being searched for 9.9X more than average—as this audience emerges from lockdown and prepares for in-person interactions, they are focused on appearance and combating stains through teeth whitening products. Top indexing audiences driving this include:

• Social Media Enthusiast (10.0X)—ready to document post-lockdown moments with friends
• Gen Z (5.5X)—see oral beauty as a way to fulfill their self-care needs and to get social and date ready

‘Fresh Breath’ is being searched for 5.4X more than average—spending more face-to-face time again, fresh breath is front of mind. Top indexing audiences driving this include:

• Fashion Enthusiast (47.3X)—focused on all aspects of their appearance as they re-emerge from lockdown
• DIY Enthusiast (9.1X)—having adopted DIY personal care during lockdown, they’re applying these skills and habits to oral beauty

Oral-B dominates share of search

Legacy brands continue to dominate share of search, despite the fast and popular emergence of DTC brands in the oral beauty industry, such as Moon and BURST.

Brand share of search for oral beauty:

• Oral-B: 45%
• Sonicare: 27%
• Colgate: 17%
• Quip: 6%
• Foreo: 5%

In 2020, Oral-B released their much-anticipated iO smart device and the brand continues to hold a large market share as the ‘Pearly Whiters’ look to achieve professional results for upcoming plans.

Skincare device brand Foreo’s and subscription brand Quip’s emerging share of search reflects how beauty-focused oral care brands are starting to compete with legacy brands.

Understand emerging oral beauty audiences through search 

Brand marketers should lean on intent revealed through fresh data, instead of assumptive demographics to monitor how motivations are shifting, identify unexpected oral beauty audiences and capture consumers in real-time moments of interest.

Get in touch to request a demo of Sense, Captify’s new Search Intent Platform designed for brands to discover critical consumer behaviors and insights, pinpoint the intent and size of audiences, and seamlessly activate programmatically across all channels—all powered by real-time intent.

*Data sourced from Captify’s global network from 10/01/20-04/18/21