Smile Direct Club-Welcome!环境!Bienvenidos!

Working Doc

The Objective of this brief is to prepare our team for the arrival of a powerful competitor.
Competition is good for the market and for consumers. We want the best for consumers, let’s
make this a fight where patients win and get the best service.

Nonetheless there is a story that will remind us where we are: Star Wars. We have been doing
good for customers by offering amazingly priced orthodontic treatments with certified local
doctors and personalized care with a, soon to be, cutting edge app. Now comes the Empire, a
strongly funded very numbers driven cowboy-led organisation that has IPOd and to that will
have to end our Resistance. Let’s give ourselves the pleasure of showing them how to
understand and take care of Singapore and all over Asian customers.

+ Zenyum’s Values: Speed | Grit | Curiosity | Candour | Lightheartedness, how can we not win?

Topics:
1. SDC Model vs the Market: how they operate
2. Brand Positionings
3. Strategic Options
4. Our Action Plan and Next Steps
5. General Knowledge on our friendly competitor

(1) SDC Model vs the market

● Context: They are a bunch of retail experts. Meaning the company’s strength is making
the retail experience slick and effortless. They get the traffic online and then lock in
throw a swift and seamless store experience:

○ Well scripted experience: Great “live” sales people, that try to get immediate
down-payment once they have you in the store
○ Not a medical experience: make it easy (too easy)
○ Buy on the spot and pay later: “for as low as S$115 per month”

● Strong focus on US Retail model:

 ○ All marketing
○ Strong commission based organization
○ Most probably an aggressive policy to close customers on the spot (never let the
customer escape)

It is all about the Sales Does not Feel like a Clinic Store is replica of Online

(2) Brands Positioning

● SDC-DIY + Retail Experience: As an American Publicly traded company their focus is to

drive the brand experience and volume of sales through the retail space.
a. This strong focus on:
■ Online paid communication: ads, ads, ads to drive traffic to stores
■ Retail experience: “Apple-Store” of Dental care but salesy
■ The retail sales personnel are key (strongly commission focused). Costly
to train but easy to lose if sales decrease/tempted by other company
b. Less focus on:
■ Customer stories (or very American vs actually local)
■ Service and Experience (emails via Call Center Vs App 24/7
conversations)
■ Dental Care and connections
● Brand Positioning Mapping:
a. Market leader: Invisalign with a full dental model
b. Zenyum the Disrupter: simpler cases, full service and price savvy
c. Become: DTC agile reaction to customer demand / no clear model, somewhere in
between full SDC clone and trying to get to Zenyum standards
d. Smile Direct:
■ DTC with Retail space in HK
■ SG: two options for Smile Shops in Singapore:
1. Dentist at Smile Shops: similar to how a Guardian works or some
Optical stores work: you have 1 optician certain hours and the rest
of the time sales people
2. Smile Shops at Clinics: within an existing dental clinic they will
have a rented space to scan people

Implications:
1. Dentist at Smile Shops: we can more comfortably use a promoter
team to stand by the shop and tell customers they can have a
similar price and product with completely different service and
dental care (drive traffic to Zenyum)
2. Smile Shops at Clinics: in this case our focus the dental
community’s opinion towards this issue
(3) Strategic Options

● Context: Based on the position of every player and especially a pretty differential factor:
Zenyum has the best price range while offering much superior service and offers
proximity not a queue in a call center queue. As such:
○ Strengths Zenyum:
■ Philosophy proximity with Invisalign and Dental Community
■ Service: Full service app and assigned customer care professional
■ Technology build for personalized physiognomy: the value of
customization (IPR) Vs Scale and cookie-cutter approaches
○ Weakness Zenyum: No Retail space to seduce + Payment Options (Promoter for
Zenyum in front of Store + Alternative Payments)
○ Strengths SDC: Slick Retail and Payment Options
○ Weakness SDC: Horrible customer stories + Service from US (Guerrilla marketing
and campaigns like: NOT A HARD CHOICE
(4) Our Action Plan and Next Steps

● Context: Now we understand better our big rival and our options to
reach customers and partners in a different way

● Strategy Areas: based on the current breakdown we will focus on:

a.

● Next Steps: we will work as a team to become the finally victorious Resistance ;-)
○ PR Strategy: Julian, Keith and Marc why we need to protect the dental profession
and Singapore customers
○ Dental partners: Candace and Vic
■ Why we are here to enable dental professionals to grow
■ Accelerate cross referral: accelerate the complex cases sent to clinics
process we started @Vic
○ Acceleration of Differentiation via Communication
■ Brand Design with Nikhil and Jon in collaboration with Marketing team to
develop campaign path
■ Performance Marketing to guide us in Guerrilla war efforts: SEM vs Social
on horrors stories about SDC what will be more impactful based on
current traffic flow for them

● Supporting Docs:
a. Smile_Direct_Team_Brief: this is a live document to add and modify our broad
strategy
b. SDC Welcome Plan: details on the action plan and some ideas can be tracked
here:
■ Dashboard to all tabs
■ Structure and Steps
■ Value Proposition: G sheets is not ideal way to breakdown our 3 Pillars of
Brand Differentiation and which campaign platforms will be developed
but it will serve as a starting point

●
 ■ Campaigns Platform ideas:
● Blue Vs Purple: Building on the ideas from Steven Wu
● Not a hard Choice

(5) General Knowledge on our friendly competitor

● Digital Assets: IG is the key validator and social engagement tool. However Youtube to
explain details of the process and many videos above 50K views
US physiognomy , while very few/non Asian from Asia
smiles

Platform Link Followers # Max Views Piece

Youtube SDC YouTube 6,900 298,000
IG @smiledirectclub 429,000 19,111
FB SDC FB 586,000
Tiktok None
LINE None
Kakao None

● Comparison: What is our Value Proposition in detail look like vs SDC

Basic Comparison:
Zenyum SmileDirectClub
SGD 2,500 (no dental visit
How much does it cost? SGD 2,400 cost)

Dental clinic consultation and assessment? Yes ✘

Dental clinic check-ups on your progress? Yes ✘

Yes, 24/7 daily access to

your dentist/orthodontist Yes, doctor checks in with
Dentist Monitoring via Mobile App & customer support team you every 90 days

Installment plans? ✓ ✓

Stringent case selection process? ✓ ✘

Locally licensed dentist supervision? ✓ ✘

Custom treatment plan suited for the Asian face
anatomy? ✓ ✘
Interproximal reduction (IPR) for better aesthetic
results? ✓ ✘

Average treatment duration Average of 3 to 9 months Average of 4 to 6 months

Removable, invisible and unobtrusive? ✓ ✓

Detailed Comparison: Copy of Zenyum Invisible Braces vs. SmileDirectClub – What’s The
Difference? (Article)

2 situaitons

1st points: Slick American Company: good impression

Assumption 100% legal anb build the arguments in any case

● Bad reputation and experience local doctors
● There own doctor
● Doomsday scenario: wake up call scenario
○ Works for customers: look at what happens
○ Dentist: ethical point of view: duty of care/hippocratic oath
■ X-ray vs 3DScan: got you by the code (Wonder Smile is actually
impersonating)
■ In person review
■ IPR:

Probability now low, actually high.

1. Public:
Risk: being categorized with them
+ Pledge of quality ideally with Invisalign and Dental Associations
● Badge of quality in all communications
● Landing page explaining the quality pledge
+ Action Video: Journalist go to 3x attend each of the
→ 1st Line of attack: Adds by Friday for meeting MOH on Monday
→ Edelman: line of attack once they open and we have a clear angle
 2. Own Database: use B&P Campaign Structure

When will CDO act:

- Blatant complaint: send a bunch of employees, focus on receiving dental advice.
- Customer complaint is the key trigger: take up a couple of treatments and then
complain

3. CDO, MoH, HSA: influence audiences is key. What triggers action? Complaints
- If the patients complain have
- Asian psignomy is important
→ Info memo on all the cases (CDO will act once there is a dentist
involved).
Focus on preparing them to be triggered

4. Call Script in HK to incorporate

In general focus on the legal issues and small things: taxes, legal status.

→ 2 people to start treatment: Candace (slight underbite), Ahmirah (let me check)

Strategy: info in info out (Legal focus with lawyers)