This clever Businessman turned a normally occuring phenomenon into a habit loop!
What’s the first thing most people do when they get up!?
Let’s not talk about checking the phone for now!
But it’s usually brushing your teeth!
You know in 1900s, no one used to brush their teeth so routinely or daily! Lets not even talk about taking bath daily!
Most would simply take some water and rinse around and spit! Brushing was over! This is about the west of course!
We in EAST had our barks and twigs and well actually a better sense of hygiene!
But the modern habit of regular, daily teeth brushing was largely created by a legendary advertising campaign for Pepsodent toothpaste in the 1910s and 1920s!
In fact the fact of the matter is that before this campaign, oral hygiene was practically non-existent in the West!
In fact only about 7% of Americans even owned a tube of toothpaste!
Pepsodent’s massive marketing push single-handedly triggered a behavioral shift that skyrocketed that number to 65% within a decade!
This transformation is studied as one of history’s greatest examples of psychological habit-engineering!
In 1915, an executive from Pepsodent approached Claude C. Hopkins, a pioneer of modern advertising, to design a nationwide campaign for their new minty toothpaste.
He discovered reference to mucin plaques—the naturally occurring layer of protein and bacteria that forms on teeth.
Hopkins repackaged this scientific concept into a simple, dramatic buzzword: “The Film”.
Then he went on to engineer the “Habit Loop”
Hopkins built the Pepsodent campaign around what psychologists now call the “Habit Loop,” which relies on a distinct cue, a routine, and a reward.
Stage one of this is the CUE or the Trigger!
Ads instructed readers: “Run your tongue across your teeth. You’ll feel a film.” This gave people a universal, immediate physical trigger they could notice anytime!
Then add the routine! Brushing daily with Pepsodent Toothpaste to specifically clear away that film!
Finally the Reward! A beautiful, whiter, and radiating “Pepsodent Smile” that promised attractive social status.
All while it has been found that historically, the “film” on your teeth is a completely natural membrane that reappears even if you brush perfectly, and it can be wiped away by a finger or a quick water rinse!
But Hopkins successfully tied that everyday sensation directly to a craving for beauty and cleanlines!
So any habit once developed remains! So make sure you develop good ones! Like reading and writing blogs!
Or making someone laugh like Cheyur Krishna Rao Nageswaran aka Nagesh!
Another good habit is to sleep on time!
Shub ratri…
