Aspen Dental is one of the largest dental care brands in the United States that's been operating for more than 25 years. They’ve changed over 10 million smiles and are committed to removing financial barriers and improving people’s confidence.
Despite Aspen Dental's life-changing impact, their advertising didn’t reflect who they truly were. While the brand delivers modern and compassionate state-of-the-art dental care, their video creative felt disconnected from the humanity of the work happening inside their offices every day. It felt dated, stale, and emotionally flat.
Our objective was to modernize Aspen Dental’s video advertising across Meta, Google, TikTok, YouTube, and OLV/CTV — not by simply polishing existing assets, but by fundamentally rethinking how the brand showed up in digital and social environments.
We set out to uncover the emotional core of Aspen Dental: the trust they build, the confidence they restore, and the life-changing outcomes they deliver. The goal was to create video ads that felt punchy, contemporary, joyful, relevant, and performance-driven, while also being heartfelt, empowering, and deeply human.
We wanted Aspen Dental’s advertising to finally reflect the care they provide — and to connect with the people who need their services most in ways that stand out, resonate, and perform on digital and social platforms.
While Aspen Dental's competitors lean into fear, click bait, and gimmicks like “teeth in a day,” we saw an opportunity to show people what they stands for: trust, dependability, and compassion. We focused on the real emotional barriers people face when seeking dental care — fear, embarrassment, financial anxiety — and spoke to them empathetically, confidently, and without judgment.
Many patients who come to Aspen Dental are missing multiple teeth or all their teeth. They're used to hiding, not taking care of themselves, and usually are weary of dental work because of a bad experience, financial reasons, or because they don't think they can have a better smile.
We wanted to change that and let them know: not only do they deserve a smile they're proud of, they can get one at Aspen Dental, no matter the state of their teeth or their financial situation.
Execution
To capture authenticity at its source, we filmed inside real Aspen Dental practices in Las Vegas, NV; Panama City, FL; and Hialeah, FL — documenting real patients, real dentists, and real transformations.
We intentionally moved away from traditional healthcare advertising aesthetics. Instead of muted palettes, scripted soundbites, or stock-looking imagery, we built a bold new brand world: saturated colors, confident typography, expressive motion graphics, and joyful, unfiltered human moments.
We conducted over 30 one-on-one patient interviews and captured real interactions between patients and their Aspen Dental dentists in a safe environment where they could share vulnerably. After their interview, we brought them onto a bright blue backdrop to capture something often missing from dental advertising: pride, laughter, joy, confidence, and personality.
To help patients relax and be themselves, we played their favorite music and had a chef prepare the food they were most excited to eat with their new teeth. Many of these pateints couldn't eat anything that wasn't soft before Aspen Dental— seeing them bite into an apple, chip, or sandwich was a huge moment!
The Challenge
We had only 2 weeks to plan the first shoot, including scripts, interview prep, shot list, art direction, food styling, and wardrobe. Instead of actors, we were shooting real patients in an operating dentist office during working hours, so we had to prepare for every scenario and operated with limtied talent information — no casting, pre-reads, or wardrobe sizing information. We also had very tight timelines for post, often creating 3-5 net new video concepts in 3-4 days.
Execution
We wrote scripts around the best moments captured, and edited footage and photography together in fun, poppy ways to create emotionally-resonant, stand-out video creative. We used punchy copy, fast-paced editing, motion graphics, and upbeat music to bring new life and energy into the brand.
Despite the challenges, the result was a robust, beautiful, human-centered library that allowed us to create video ad creative at scale that captured the heart and soul of Aspen Dental patients, inspiring millions of people to get a smile they're proud of.
In 2025, we created over 100 video ad assets, took over 30,000 photos, and built a robust photo and video library designed for long-term iteration, testing, and performance filled with glowing, confident smiles.
From a performance standpoint, our video ads dramatically outperformed Aspen Dental’s previous benchmarks, proving that emotionally-resonant, human-first storyelling and modern motion graphics can drive both brand impact and measurable action.
Our creative reached millions of people while maintaining exceptional efficiency. Our top-performing video campaign (Aspen Dental's Mission) generated nearly 4 million video views at an average cost of just $0.04 per view, which translated into tens of thousands of site visits without creative fatigue.
“Sky High Prices Are Everywhere,” achieved a 14.28% CTR, driving 78,667 clicks in a single week. Across upper-funnel video campaigns, view-through rates remained consistently high at 97–99%, signaling strong engagement and message resonance.
Beyond metrics, the impact was deeply human. Patients openly shared emotional stories — including one who said "Asepn Dental changed my life. I used to sit in the background and just listen, but now I'm back, I'm the first one to say something all the time."
Another success signal: the footage captured during these shoots is still being used across paid, web, and organic social.
We didn’t just create video ads — we built a scalable, human-centered library that changed how Aspen Dental shows up, empowering millions more people to get a smile they deserve and live more confidently, undoubtedly the most important metric of all.
