Moving from chair time to remote, orthodontist - designed care at scale.

After Invisalign’s patents expired, orthodontics became a land rush of DTC entrants wielding new tech. Candid’s core hurdle was trust: persuading people that remote, clinician-directed tooth movement (literally bone) was safe and effective amid resistance from traditional orthodontists. Conversion was equally tough—pay for impressions, mail molds, wait for a plan, then commit about $2K for treatment, scanner, and aligners.

Insight: In a category framed as cosmetic correction, the real human driver is self-expression. People wanted clinical clarity and humane guidance, not vanity tropes.

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Vision: Position Candid as transformative oral health—led by orthodontists, powered by technology, delivered as whole care—so people can fully express themselves. We codified four operating commitments: complete integrity, approachable expertise, advanced technology, and whole care, turning the positioning into daily practice.

We translated self-expression into a distinctive identity and system that reframed orthodontics as transformative care. The Candid wordmark foregrounds “ID,” while an arched graphic derived from it reads as both a mouth and a symbol of change. A precise typographic stack, clinical whites with confident color accents, and warm, real-patient photography balance expertise with approachability. Clear iconography and simple diagrams make treatment steps legible, and motion follows the arc of progress from scan to smile. The system travels intact across app, clinics, kits, and marketing so every touchpoint tells the same story.

We engineered a modular identity where the wordmark, arc device, type, color, iconography, and motion rules act as components that “click” together. Templates and design tokens make the system portable across app, clinics, packaging, OOH, TV, and social, enabling thousands of assets to be produced with speed and consistent quality.

We built a cross-functional growth studio of strategists, analysts, designers, writers, and motion artists that shipped hundreds of performance assets each week. A tight test-and-learn loop—hypotheses, structured variants, rapid reads, and scaling of winners from paid social to DRTV—kept creative, media, and analytics working from one scoreboard and fed improvements into landing pages, onboarding, and CRM.

With limited brand budget, we ran moment-led campaigns that turned product milestones and cultural beats into outsized awareness: surgical stunts, smart partnerships, and editorial drops that traveled across OOH, social, and PR. Each idea was built to cascade into performance channels, boosting search and conversion without heavy media.

During the mid-Covid “NYC is dead” discourse, we countered with a geo-specific activation that mapped smiles back onto the city. Using location data and dynamic creative, we surfaced neighborhood-relevant moments that reminded New Yorkers why they love this place, turning a doom narrative into everyday delight.

We tapped a universal memory—the ordeal of teen braces—to speak directly to parents. Creative surfaced the pain, appointments, and awkwardness they remember, then contrasted it with a humane, clinician-led path powered by digital diagnostics and smart remote oversight.

We partnered with Simone Biles, whose mastery and self-expression mirror Candid’s ethos, to make the promise tangible. Over 2.5 years we co-created TV, webinars, and social content that paired authority with warmth, positioning her as an authentic guide to clinical oversight, remote care, and confident outcomes. The partnership extended into performance, PR, and clinician education, broadening reach and deepening trust.