AAO - Consumer Awareness Program

We received a great email from Courtney Dunn from the American Association of Orthodontists this week and wanted to share it with you all (especially the hilarious video!). Here it is:

"A week ago, Buzzfeed shared a video on social media about leaving things to the professionals – and orthodontics was featured.

This dental video, while humorous, was targeted at today’s younger consumers online who may be tempted by do-it-yourself and unsupervised orthodontic care. As part of the AAO’s Consumer Awareness Program (CAP), the Council On Communications (COC) has been taking a much stronger approach at educating the public on the importance of seeing a specialist when considering braces or orthodontic care.

Is this all the CAP is doing? This video?

Oh no, it certainly isn’t. Your voices have been heard – the COC wants all of our members to know that we are aware and we do care about promoting our great specialty. We take our job seriously and we are passionate about succeeding. We have been working tirelessly over the last 6 months to push the CAP into a new, more effective direction. This included moving much of our efforts to online, digital platforms – where most consumers are getting their information from nowadays. It also included an overhaul of our creative materials. The main messaging? That orthodontists are the specialists; and it is imperative that you see an orthodontist in person. All campaigns drive traffic to the AAO’s consumer website that is full of consumer education materials, as well as the “Find an Orthodontist feature”.

Is it working?

While I can sit here and bore you with numbers – like the 125 million+ times the CAP ads have appeared on mobile devices over the last few months, or the 1800% increase in Facebook followers, or the millions of Google search listings for various orthodontics products CAP ads have appeared in recently – we actually thought it would be easiest to give you a visual, and let you be the judge. Below is a graph that shows the year-over-year difference in traffic to our consumer website. 2016 vs. 2017. Yes, that’s a lot more traffic this year with our new direction. And that’s a lot of consumers looking for information on AAO orthodontists.

AAO CAP stats

Are you done?

No. We’re nowhere near calling it a day. We’re just getting started. We’ve got a lot of new creative and dental marketing campaign ideas in the works for the CAP – and can’t wait to let members know about them in the months to come.

How can I help?

Follow the AAO’s dental social media channels – and SHARE, SHARE, SHARE! (Links below) We encourage all members to help us promote our great profession. And we welcome your ideas, too. If you have them – let me know, as your COC representative. I’m happy to pass them along!

Thank you for your continued support.

Go with a Pro – a doctor from the AAO!"


Happy Holidays,

Dr. Courtney Dunn, your PCSO COC representative