American Association of Orthodontists
Founded in 1900, the American Association of Orthodontists (AAO) is the world's largest dental specialty association recognized by the American Dental Association®. Their mission is to promote good oral health to the public while advocating for the orthodontic profession. The AAO currently represents over 18K+ members worldwide.
Consumer Awareness
As part of the AAO’s strategic plan, the Consumer Awareness Program (CAP) was created with one goal in mind - to promote and defend the specialty. How do we go about doing so? By increasing consumer awareness of orthodontics by orthodontists.
The CAP is the only mass-market campaign designed to introduce the benefits of orthodontic treatment. Key to the campaign – particularly in today’s world of direct-to-consumer everything – is to promote the importance and value of receiving care from qualified professionals, namely, orthodontists. The digitally focused effort uses a wide range of free and paid tactics to drive traffic to AAO’s consumer website. With traffic to the consumer website nearing a plateau, the creation of a brand new consumer-facing website was apparent. In June of 2018 the new aaoinfo.org was launched - equipped with a fresh, new look and optimized search compatibility for the Find An Orthodontist feature. And it proved to be a monumental year — have a look for yourself.
In FY20-21 alone, CAP ads drove over 4.8 million consumers to our website. And we’re not done yet.
Member Marketing
Stepping into the AAO, it was apparent that consumer marketing was suffering and member outreach was being lost in translation. There was one common theme - messaging. Our members were misinformed. They were unaware of the many efforts being done by both marketing and legal to advocate for their profession. But the great part about an organization is that it’s made up of people. With only a few cameras and a notebook of questions, I trekked across North America getting to know Real People. Our People.™ Enter the AAO Member Stories campaign.
In addition to sharing our member’s experiences with the broader scope of our association, we went back to the drawing board on our member communications tactics. Updates were made to several of our larger communication tools including our weekly eBulletin, quarterly print publication and annual conferences. In 2020, 2021, and 2022 our efforts were recognized at the Association Trends™ TRENDY Awards, where the AAO marketing department was multi-nominated and awarded in the weekly communications, membership promotion, video campaign and convention package categories.
Bringing the orthodontic community together.
At the AAO, we are proud to create powerful experiences for our members. Meetings, conferences and sessions engage and delight while providing the profession’s most robust and highest-quality learning curricula. For more than a hundred years, the orthodontic community has gathered far and wide to celebrate the art and science of orthodontics. That celebration is Annual Session - the world’s largest orthodontic conference in the world. With more than 16,000 attendees, 400 exhibitors, and over 245 speakers, Annual Session is more than a conference. It’s a celebration of innovation.
Beginning in 2018, the AAO took a new approach on promoting to their members. The approach was simple - create short, promotional videos highlighting our annual events. And drive traffic straight to our new member-focused website. The ads were promoted across all digital platforms - Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to name a few.
