Where To Buy Crest Toothpaste NEW!
Crest is an American brand of toothpaste and other oral hygiene products made by American multinational Procter & Gamble (P&G) and sold worldwide. In many countries in Europe, such as Germany, Bulgaria, Serbia, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Poland, Hungary, Latvia, Romania, Estonia and Lithuania, it is sold as Blend-A-Med, the name of an established German toothpaste acquired by P&G in 1987 (formerly Blendax GmbH).[1] In France, Italy, Israel, Sweden, Finland, Argentina, Belgium, the Netherlands, Brazil, the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, Australia, Nigeria, Greece, Uruguay and Colombia, P&G markets similar toothpaste formulations under the Oral-B brand.[2]
where to buy crest toothpaste
Crest was introduced in the United States as "Fluoristan" in 1954, as it contained stannous fluoride. In 1955, the name of the product was changed to "Crest with Fluoristan."[3][4][5] The composition of the toothpaste had been developed by Joseph C. Muhler, Harry Day, and William H. Nebergall at Indiana University, and was patented by Nebergall. Procter & Gamble paid royalties from use of the patent and thus financed a new dental research institute at this university ("The House that Crest built").[6][7] The active ingredient of Crest was changed in 1981 to sodium fluoride, or "Fluoristat", which it uses today as "Dentifrice with Fluoristat"; Crest Pro-Health uses stannous fluoride again and an abrasive whitener together called "Polyfluorite". Crest is accepted by the American Dental Association (ADA),[8][9] as well as by equivalent dental associations in other countries.
One notable ad campaign from the brand was in the late 1970s and early 1980s, written and produced by Gregory Sinnott and designed by comic book artist Herb Trimpe, where animated ads featured the "Cavity Creeps", a group of grey-colored, rocky humanoid creatures bent on destroying the city of "Toothopolis" (essentially an island city protected by an enormous wall of teeth), with their signature battle cry "We make holes in teeth!" They were defeated time and again by the "Crest Team", a group of people dressed in Crest-themed jumpsuits, who wielded giant toothbrushes and tubes of Crest to not only ward off the Cavity Creeps but to protect the wall as well. The team would encourage kids at the end of each commercial to "watch treats and see your dentist" so they could fight cavities "like the Crest Team". From 2004 to 2010, Crest sold dental floss under the Crest Glide brand, which is now called Oral-B Glide. The original logo for Crest was designed by Donald Deskey. In 2014, Crest Fresh and White were introduced as a replacement for the discontinued Gleem brand.
In 2016, the FDA banned the use of triclosan in over-the-counter soaps and cleansers such as antibacterial hand soaps, bar soaps, and body wash. The FDA rule doesn't apply to toothpaste, but toothpaste manufacturers have voluntarily stopped putting triclosan in their products.
Stannous fluoride is an antimicrobial agent. It is very good at controlling dental plaque and treating gingivitis. Crest Pro-Health products use stannous fluoride instead of sodium fluoride (the fluoride in most toothpaste brands, including Colgate).
Cheng X, Liu J, Li J, et al. Comparative effect of a stannous fluoride toothpaste and a sodium fluoride toothpaste on a multispecies biofilm. Arch Oral Biol. 2017;74:5-11. doi:10.1016/j.archoralbio.2016.10.030
Editor's Note: In the mid-1950s, P&G's new Crest toothpaste gained a modest 10 percent market share. But starting in 1960, Crest would dominate toothpaste sales for thirty years. What changed? P&G spent big to make Crest a therapeutic as well as a cosmetic product, and the endorsement of the American Dental Association shot Crest into orbit. This excerpt comes from a broader look in Harvard Business School's Business History Review at toothpaste innovation and marketing from 1955 to 1985.
The significance of a toothpaste that offered genuine dental protection was well understood by manufacturers in the 1950s. A detailed report on the market by Unilever in 1959 made the following observation:
Unfortunately, the true therapeutic toothpaste giving a high degree of protection against dental caries still remains a dream, one which seems unlikely to come true for some time. If this problem could be solved it might give us a world beater.44
Until the publication of this report, Unilever's personal care business (then known as "toilet preparations") remained in the shadow of its margarine and detergents operations, and it had conducted relatively little research on toothpaste. Yet, while Unilever's managers pondered the potential of a "true therapeutic toothpaste," their rivals at P&G had already been committing considerable resources to developing one, and by the end of the 1950s they were on the verge of achieving a major breakthrough.
Growing scientific evidence that a chemical, fluoride, helped to reduce the likelihood of developing dental cavities had intrigued managers at P&G even before that company became involved in the dentifrice market. With no experience in the field of dental research, in 1950 P&G enlisted Indiana University to carry out research for the purpose of developing a therapeutic toothpaste. Over the next fourteen years, P&G would spend over $3 million on this joint project, working with researchers at Indiana (led by Dr. Joseph Muhler) to create a product that could be proved effective in reducing tooth decay.45
By 1952 Muhler and his team had managed to produce a dentifrice product containing stannous fluoride, which was believed to protect against cavities. A patent was issued to Indiana University, although P&G paid royalties for an exclusive contract to use the formulation. P&G's own scientists then designed a process to mass-produce the product.46 The development (or invention) of this product, however, was only the first step in a much longer process of innovation, which would culminate in P&G's domination of the U.S. toothpaste market with its Crest brand. The story of Crest toothpaste, in fact, provides a clear indication of the distinction between "invention" and "innovation" made by Schumpeter, who argued that "to carry any improvement into effect is a task entirely different from the inventing of it, and a task, moreover, requiring entirely different kinds of aptitudes."47
Between 1952 and the initial launch of Crest in 1955, Muhler's team at Indiana University conducted trials involving 1,500 children and 400 adults. Around half of the trial participants showed some reduction in levels of tooth decay.48 P&G was confident that its product was effective, and the Crest brand was rolled out nationally across the country in January 1956. The promising clinical results achieved in product trials, however, were not reflected in market share for the new brand. In both its test markets in 1955 and its national launch the following year, Crest struggled to hold as much as 10 percent of the toothpaste market. This was hardly disastrous, but the brand still lagged a long way behind the market leader, Colgate, whose market share was hardly affected by the new entry (Table 4). If Crest was indeed the first genuinely therapeutic toothpaste, its benefits were not immediately apparent to U.S. consumers, who, it seems, remained skeptical of advertising claims.49
The breakthrough that resulted in Crest's dominating the U.S. market came four years after its national launch (and eight years after its "invention"), when, in 1960, it became the first brand of toothpaste to receive an endorsement from the American Dental Association (ADA). P&G had first approached the ADA in 1954 with evidence from clinical trials of Crest, but a dental profession long skeptical of the claims made by toothpaste advertisers was not easily persuaded of the therapeutic benefits of this new brand. Scientists and marketing managers at P&G remained in close contact with the ADA, however, and between 1954 and 1959 the company continued to invest heavily in further research at Indiana University. The effectiveness of Crest was analyzed in twenty-three separate group studies, each one lasting two years and costing between $10,000 and $20,000 to conduct. When the ADA staff eventually felt that enough evidence had been amassed, a formal submission was made to the Association's Council on Dental Therapeutics, which agreed that Crest had been shown to be "an effective anti-caries" agent.50
In 1960 Crest was given a "category B" endorsement by the ADA, indicating a reasonable level of effectiveness in preventing tooth decay. This was enough to set it apart from all other toothpastes on the market and to convince many consumers that its therapeutic claims were genuine. Within two years, Crest's market share had leapt to over 30 percent, making it the new market leader.51 Yet P&G's research efforts did not stop there. Over the next few years, as competitor brands also added fluoride to their formulations and sought ADA endorsements of their own, clinical trials continued at Indiana. By 1964 Crest had been tested in fourteen different types of situation (compared with just five in 1960), and its endorsement in that year was elevated to "category A," which meant that the ADA seal could be displayed in Crest advertisements.52 It was not until 1969 that Crest's nearest rival, Colgate, was able to obtain a similar endorsement, by which time it lagged some fourteen percentage points behind the market leader.53
The impact of Crest's success on the U.S. market was a good illustration of Schumpeter's concept of "creative destruction," in which markets are periodically revolutionized, with new products, systems, or ideas replacing existing ones.54 Crest was important not simply because it became market leader in the United States but also because it triggered a major readjustment in the entire market. The introduction of fluoride into toothpaste, and the subsequent endorsement of these products by the ADA, effectively changed the rules of the game in toothpaste marketing. First-mover advantage in this new marketplace belonged not to Colgate-Palmolive, but to P&G. Its Crest brand would remain the market leader until the 1990s. The extent to which toothpaste shifted out of the cosmetic category to become known as a therapeutic product in the United States between the 1950s and the 1980s is illustrated in Table 5. 041b061a72