Exclusive: P&G, Huffington's Thrive Global Team Up To Turn Everyday Products Into Wellness Boosters

News 16 Hours AgoFortune — Sy Mukherjee

Consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble has teamed up with Thrive Global, the wellness and behavioral health firm led by Arianna Huffington, in a bid to turn some of P&G’s most commonly used products into wellness boosters.

The partnership involves a half dozen P&G brands – including Crest, Oral-B, Pampers, Venus, Secret, and Pantene – and spans both social media marketing campaigns and new internet-connected consumer health devices. The groups are announcing the initiative at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in France on Monday.

picture ORAL-B device

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A connected OralB devive

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That includes the Oral-B Sense, an upcoming WiFi-enabled “smart toothbrush” that provides personalized feedback to consumers on their brushing habits. Thrive’s central role across the P&G portfolio will be providing what the company calls behavioral “microsteps” in order to “habit-stack” – i.e, build a positive, affirming mental habit into something consumers may already do every day.

That could include anything from urging people to give themselves a life-affirming message when putting on deodorant in the morning to singing a song to their babies while changing their diapers, Huffington told Fortune in an interview.

Both Huffington and Marc Pritchard, chief brand officer at P&G (a company whose products reach some five billion people), emphasized the potential scope of such a joint campaign.

“Human beings gravitate toward ritual… and P&G products have incredible compliance,” said Huffington. She added that the only way to end widespread burnout among workers – a cause she has long championed, and a reality the World Health Organization declared a workplace crisis just last month – is to build healthier habits, especially when it comes to mental health.

“The habits for the products we provide is quite high; 90% use deodorant, many people brush their teeth twice a day,” said Pritchard. “Through content we’re creating with Thrive, they’ll be able to learn these microsteps and use them in the everyday with our products.”