Situation: Helping Consumers Visualize Teeth Whitening
Colgate-Palmolive Company is a caring, innovative growth company reimagining a healthier future for all people, their pets and our planet. Focused on Oral Care, Personal Care, Home Care and Pet Nutrition, Colgate sells its products in more than 200 countries and territories. The company is recognized for its leadership and innovation in promoting sustainability and community wellbeing, including its achievements in decreasing plastic waste and promoting recyclability, saving water, conserving natural resources and improving children’s oral health through the Colgate Bright Smiles, Bright Futures program, which has reached more than 1.7 billion children and their families since 1991.
While many companies make a claim to teeth whitening, Colgate wanted to give consumers a science-driven experience.
“As a science-based company, Colgate wanted to provide consumers with a realistic augmented reality (AR) experience so they could see for themselves the difference that our whitening products can make for their own teeth,” says Gary Binstock, Director of Technology, Strategic Innovation & Technology Alliances, at Colgate-Palmolive. “We needed an AR system that reflected what our researchers had found in laboratory settings.”
Solution: Perfect Corp.’s Best-in-Class AR Technology
Colgate worked with Perfect Corp., the leader in providing AI/AR solutions for the beauty industry, to launch its AR-Powered Teeth Whitening Virtual Experience. Perfect Corp. worked with Colgate scientists to integrate a specialized teeth whitening algorithm to bring the results of the brands’ Colgate Optic White Overnight Teeth Whitening Pen and other products to life through AR simulation.
The AR Teeth Whitening Virtual Experience, believed to be the world’s first ever such experience for teeth, was developed through extensive research and collaboration between Colgate scientists and Perfect Corp.’s engineers. The result is a specialized AR-powered tool that simulates teeth whitening results that may be achieved after using the Colgate Optic White Overnight Teeth Whitening Pen after two weeks of use.
The unique teeth whitening tool allows users to view the simulation of a brighter smile in an instant, helping them visualize a whiter smile after using the Colgate Optic White Overnight Teeth Whitening Pen with the tap of their smartphone. The AR tool simulates the results a user could experience after two weeks of daily treatment with the pen. This allows consumers to conveniently preview a brighter, whiter smile.
Colgate believes everyone deserves a future to smile about. Binstock notes that the AR tool simulates results to help people make decisions as they shop online, and is another important milestone in Colgate’s vision to be the leader in teeth whitening, evolving and improving how people discover and buy our products online.
Colgate is extending the AR Teeth Whitening Virtual Experience to other Optic White products and rolling the AR visualization experience out to additional global customers.
Benefits
Colgate has found a number of benefits in working with the AI/AR technology, including:
- Giving consumers real-time visualization of teeth whitening
- More than a 40% increase in consumers clicking “Buy Now” versus those not using the experience
- Longer time spent on site
- AR-powered experience encourages long-term product use and customer loyalty
- Reinforces the fact that Colgate is a science-based company
- AR teeth whitening experience can be accessed from multiple channels
Giving Consumers Real-Time Visualization of Teeth Whitening
Binstock explains that the precision of Colgate’s AR-Powered Teeth Whitening Experience is especially important because consumers are bombarded with claims from so many other companies.
“If a company claims using their product will produce X number of shades of improvement, what does that mean to a consumer?” Binstock says. “The consumer is left wondering what each shade of whitening would look like.”
With its AR virtual experience, Colgate shows consumers what they can expect to see from product usage.
“Our AR-Powered Teeth Whitening Virtual Experience, based on our extensive research and clinical results, shows consumers a realistic representation of what our products can do for their own teeth,” Binstock says. “This is what consumers want and need.”
More than 40% Increase in Consumers Clicking “Buy Now”
Giving customers an AR experience that let’s them see exactly how much brighter their smile can be makes it easier to make a purchase.
“We continue to see close to 50% of consumers clicking our ‘Buy Now’ button since deploying our AR-Powered Teeth Whitening Virtual Experience, versus those not trying the experience.” Binstock says. “Consumers really embrace our virtual try-on technology. The intent to purchase actions have been phenomenal compared to any kind of standard engagement.”
Longer Time Spent on Site
Colgate finds consumers spend more time on the company’s Whitening Hub website when they engage with the AR-Powered Teeth Whitening Virtual Experience.
“Our AR experience captivates consumers and they are spending more time on our site, including reading about products and watching videos,” Binstock says. “All of this makes it easier for them to decide on making a purchase.”
AR-Powered Experience Encourages Long-Term Product Use & Customer Loyalty
Colgate’s AR-Powered Teeth Whitening Virtual Experience helps ensure that consumers follow through with long-term use of the company’s products because the AR shows improvement based on a specific time period.
“Without something like our AR-powered experience, consumers might try a product once or twice and then stop using it because they aren’t seeing the immediate effects they had imagined,” Binstock says. “Using our AR-powered experience, consumers understand the incremental improvements and are motivated to continue using a product to gain the full benefit they’ve seen virtually for their own teeth.”
“By showing realistic results through our AR experience, we are also building customer satisfaction and customer loyalty,” Binstock says.
Reinforces the Fact that Colgate is a Science-Based Company
Deploying its AR-powered experience underscores the fact that Colgate is a science-based company.
“We know our teeth whitening products work because we have the research and science behind it,” Binstock says. “Our AR experience simply provides a virtual overlay that allows consumers to see for themselves what our scientists have found. The algorithms driving the augmented reality tie directly into our clinical results.”
The realism of Colgate’s AR-Powered Teeth Whitening Virtual Experience is demonstrated by the fact that each tooth gets its own reading.
“In real life each tooth is different, each tooth has its own shade,” Binstock says. “When consumers use our live experience, it's very realistic, it's looking tooth by tooth at your current shade. It then projects tooth by tooth, what it will look like after using our Optic White products.”
AR Teeth Whitening Experience Can be Accessed from Multiple Channels
While most consumers access Colgate’s AR-powered virtual experience through its website, the company is also expanding access on an omnichannel basis, including on pack codes.
“We like that our AR-powered virtual experience can be accessed from multiple channels,” Binstock says. “We can embed access through our URL on retailer websites or by placing QR codes on product packaging, or on retail shelves and displays. We have many ways to invite consumers into our virtual experience.”
Perfect Corp. Is an Excellent Technology Partner
Binstock says Colgate engaged with Perfect Corp. because of its reputation as the beauty industry’s leader in creating virtual try-on experiences.
“We didn’t want any smoke and mirrors,” Binstock says. “Colgate is science based and science driven, so all of the AR experiences had to match the mathematics from our extensive clinical findings for the shades of teeth whitening. Perfect Corp. was able to create AR that correctly overlayed our physical examples, so we could see this would be a powerfully useful tool for our consumers.”
About Perfect Corp.
Perfect Corp.is the leading SaaS AI and AR beauty and fashion tech solutions provider, dedicated to transforming shopping experiences through empowering brands to embrace the digital-first world.
By partnering with the largest names in the industry, Perfect Corp.’s suite of enterprise solutions delivers synergistic, technology-driven experiences that facilitate sustainable, ultra-personalized, and engaging shopping journeys, as well as equipping brands with next generation of consumer goods.
Perfect Corp. offers a complementary suite of mobile apps, including YouCam Makeup and YouCam Perfect, to provide a consumer platform to virtually try-on new products, perform skin diagnoses, edit photos, and share experiences with the YouCam Community.
To learn more, please visit PerfectCorp.com.
