When Robert Wagstaff came up with the idea for a tongue brush to cure bad breath, he was sure he had a best seller. But a decade later, after dozens of pitches to dentists and retailers and a $50,000 TV infomercial, he had a dud.
That all changed last year, when he posted a funny video about bad breath that advertised the tongue cleaner, called Orabrush, on YouTube.
A year later, people have viewed Orabrush's YouTube clips 24 million times, watching weekly appearances by a giant tongue named Morgan. Orabrush has sold $1 million worth of the $5 tongue brushes through YouTube, and major drugstores are beginning to stock it on their shelves. And in February, its maker - a tiny company in Provo, Utah - lured a former Procter & Gamble executive to become its chief executive.
Big companies have received much attention for creating promotional YouTube videos that go viral, like Procter & Gamble's runaway hit featuring the Old Spice man. But small businesses are increasingly using YouTube to advertise and - in cases like Orabrush - to establish their retail presence.
YouTube videos reverse big companies' marketing equations, said Jeff Davis, Orabrush's chief executive and a 23-year P.& G. veteran.
"What P.& G. taught me is a different model - you have an idea, build a prototype, have a test market, scale the product, find a retailer and distribution, then turn on marketing," he said. "This was the reverse. We basically launched the entire brand on YouTube and Facebook."
Shishir Mehrotra, director of product management and video monetization at Google, which owns YouTube, said that "one of the big surprises is what's happening with small advertisers."