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Five MA Advertising student project teams kicked off 2023 by presenting their proposed strategies to Toby Ososki, Creative Head and James Cook, Midweight Strategist of Epoch, Oral B's brand agency.

With the cost-of-living crisis causing consumers to opt for cheaper dental care brands – or simply go without, Epoch tasked the students with finding a way to raise the profile of oral health and encourage consumers to value their children’s dental care.

The brief asked students to develop a unique value proposition for Oral-B to tackle dental disparity among children in the UK (the correlation between household income and dental health) and to develop an original campaign idea to communicate this to the UK market as either a stand-alone campaign or through a partnership. With an almost exclusively international cohort of students, there was a wide range of innovative and creative ideas put forward during the presentations.

Students considered brand strategy, tone of voice, imagery, target audience and used primary consumer research to form their proposals of potential ways to tackle dental disparity and ways Oral-B could communicate these ideas to their consumers effectively using a new advertising campaign.

The MA Advertising course leader, Rutherford explained: ‘Working on live briefs set for us by our industry partners not only prepares our students to understand, and to meet, the challenges regularly faced by the contemporary advertising and branding industry but using their skills to respond to important issues of public health and social justice enables the students to make a genuine difference to diverse communities.’

James Cook commented: ‘Epoch Academy is an incredibly important part of our relationship with up-and-coming talent. The students at Õý°ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê×ÊÁÏ have always brought a huge amount of passion and enthusiasm to our briefs, with this year’s intake being no different. Their approaches to tackling dental disparity were varied and engaging, demonstrating a clear and timely focus on improving the world we live in.’