Taking dentistry public

Like any business, dentistry is about supply and demand and dental manufacturers are increasingly looking to drive demand to dentists for their products.

The endeavours of Dental Medical Technologies (DMT) in bringing technologies like lasers, air abrasion and accelerated whitening to the fore are well documented with several successful campaigns airing on TV current affairs, health and life style programmes.

Now, SDI (formerly Southern Dental Industries), has taken up the challenge by advertising on a billboard in Melbourne to extol the virtues of its Pola tooth whitening system and in doing so, ideally increase patient demand for the product and whitening in general.

Explains SDI's Samantha Cheetham, "For the month of December 2002, SDI had a billboard on the corner of Brunton Avenue and Punt Road, Richmond, Victoria, advertising Pola. We chose this location as it is in a prominent position in Melbourne with high traffic volumes.

"Our aim is to increase business and income for all dentists in Australia, a role which has been confirmed over the last 30 years since SDI commenced manufacturing high quality materials and making them available to the Australian dentists at considerably reduced costs when compared to imported equivalents."

According to Ms Cheetham, SDI is concerned at the high cost to the dental profession of currently imported teeth whitening products and the inexpensive over-the-counter products.

"Our Australian-made Pola system is available to dentists at approximately half the price that the foreign equivalents are sold at, thereby making this service more available to the final user - the patient.

"The billboard is totally designed to further assist the dental profession to bring the service of teeth whitening to the attention of the public and in doing so, it will assist dentists to introduce, market and increase their income from this service.

"Our research shows a considerable and increasing public interest in over-the-counter tooth whiteners and other non-professional sources of teeth whitening which, if not opposed, will reduce the amount of potential income growth for Australian dentists."

A more low key approach has been adopted by orthodontic supplier, Dentaurum, who is trialing advertorials in the free ACB Beauty magazine.

The full page article in the Summer 2002 edition, titled "Clearing the way to straighter teeth", highlights the benefits of Dentaurum's clear brackets and how they "virtually disappear in the mouth and sit flat and comfortably against the teeth".

Two photographs of a teenager wearing the brackets are presented along with information that explains the way the system works in public-speak.

Says Dentaurum's Dee MacPherson, "There is a lot of interest in orthodontics at present and we're attempting to inform the public that techniques for straightening teeth have come a long way from what people may have remembered when they were at school decades ago.

"So far, we've received over 50 calls already from all over Australia on the freecall number listed in the story and the response has been very positive."

Dentaurum is referring interested parties to one of the company's orthodontist clients nearest to where the caller lives.