Hismile: The Cult of Smilecare

In 2024, the Australian oral care brand Hismile Pty Ltd. (Hismile) reached AUD 700 million in gross sales, having more than doubled its previous year’s results for three consecutive years. In an industry historically defined by clinical trust and dominated by century-old brand giants like Colgate and Oral-B, Hismile had successfully pioneered smilecare, reframing oral hygiene as an aesthetics-driven lifestyle and identity choice for young consumers. Built by two young co-founders who rejected the old-school version of marketing and conventional frameworks, Hismile’s growth relied entirely on an unconventional, boundary-less approach rooted in co-creation, constant iteration, and definition of marketing as pure demand generation. The brand achieved a cult-like following with Generation (Gen) Z and Gen Alpha customers by positioning itself as a consumer experience that was as much entertainment as it was a functional product. Now established as the largest privately owned oral care brand in the world, co-founders Nik Mirkovic and Alex Tomic faced the ultimate test: Could their marketing playbook, where “creativity is the chaos,” be systematically analyzed, broken down, replicated, and successfully extended to disrupt a non-adjacent category like the beverage market? Could Hismile successfully launch an energy drink? Or was the company’s cult-brand energy an outcome unique to product–market fit and precise timing?