All case studies
Xtreme Toothpaste
Brand Building
2025 · Nigeria, South East & South South priority

Xtreme Toothpaste, Break the Routine. A geography-first challenger play against Colgate, CloseUp and Oral-B.

Rachael Okonkwo
The context

Xtreme is an oral care brand, competing against Colgate, CloseUp, Oral-B, and Pepsodent in Nigeria's densely contested toothpaste category. When Amplify came in, Xtreme had distribution but almost no brand presence. Digital share of voice sat at 0.3%. Community size was 12,000 against Colgate's 171,000. Sentiment score was 58 out of 100, the lowest in the category. The brand was invisible where it mattered most.

The intelligence

Why this talent. Why now.

01

Where the market was open

CDI and BDI analysis pointed clearly to one geography: the South East, Anambra, Enugu, Imo, and adjacent South South markets, Rivers and Delta. These markets had high category consumption and were chronically underinvested by the major players. CloseUp held strong presence but was communicating through generic national messaging with no cultural attunement. That was the gap.

02

The primary consumer truth

Urban female caregivers, 25 to 44, were making purchase decisions largely independently (54%) and were heavily influenced by what they saw their peers using (56%). They reward brands that speak to them in familiar, emotionally honest language. The big category players were not doing that in the South East.

03

Why Rachael Okonkwo

One decision drove the entire campaign's cultural credibility: signing Rachael Okonkwo, Nollywood actress, social media personality, and one of the most trusted female faces in South East Nigerian popular culture. Her audience mirrors Xtreme's primary consumer almost exactly. Her face on an Xtreme billboard in Anambra or Enugu does not read as advertising. It reads as endorsement from someone they trust.

04

A mental availability decision

This was not a reach decision. The CDI/BDI model confirmed what the cultural read suggested: her reach-per-naira in high-CDI, low brand development markets was unmatched by any other available ambassador.

The strategy

One campaign. All variants. One truth.

Platform: There's an Xtreme for Every Smile

Built to position the Activated Charcoal variant as premium-yet-accessible and give Xtreme a distinct ownable idea in a category dominated by clinical whiteness messaging. Every other brand was telling Nigerians what a perfect smile looks like. Xtreme told them their smile was already worth celebrating.

Campaign expression: Break the Routine

The consumer invitation, break away from your habitual toothpaste and try something that works differently, naturally, for your kind of smile.

A brand-specific sonic identity and jingle

Designed for radio recall in a market where 92% of the primary target group listens to radio. Audio is consistently underused in Nigerian FMCG brand-building. It was Xtreme's opportunity.

A consistent visual system

Red and dark aesthetic carried without variation across all OOH formats, bus branding, digital ads, and social content. Repetition of a single visual system is how associative memory forms.

A recurring campaign creative

Break the Routine was flexible enough to adapt to market, format, and channel without losing coherence. One idea. Every touchpoint.

Channel deployment
OOH, 8 states
Anambra, Enugu, Delta, Rivers, Lagos, Ogun, Kwara, Kogi
OOH formats
Unipoles, Large Format, Eye Catchers, DOOH, Rooftop Boards, Wall Mounts
Bus branding
55 branded buses across 4 Lagos routes
DOOH
Victoria Island, Ahmadu Bello Way, Ikeja City Mall
Radio
Sonic ID and jingle, regional versioning
Paid digital
Meta and YouTube, awareness and view objectives
The outcomes

Indicative results based on deployment and category benchmarks.

Baseline entering the campaign
0.3%
Digital share of voice
58/100
Brand sentiment (category low)
12,000
Social community size
Execution scale
8 states
OOH presence, near-zero to category-visible
55
Branded Lagos buses
4.2M
Rachael Okonkwo combined reach
Post-campaign performance
0.3% → 1.2%
Digital share of voice, 4× lift
49.4%
YouTube view-through rate, top 5% global
2.8×
Engagement/$ vs portfolio's best-funded brand
3.9M
Total unique reach across channels
What it proved

The takeaways we carried into every brief after this.

01

The South East was an underserved market that major players were communicating past, not to. A brand with a smaller budget and sharper thinking could own that geography if the creative, the ambassador, and the media were aligned to the same cultural truth.

02

Rachael Okonkwo was not chosen because she was famous. She was chosen because she was trusted by exactly the audience Xtreme needed to reach, and because a model confirmed that her cultural reach-per-naira in those specific markets was the most efficient investment available.

03

Geographic prioritisation backed by data, combined with a creator whose cultural credibility is earned not manufactured, is a more powerful combination than broad national spend with a bigger name.

More from set

Behind the campaign.

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