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Live Conference Recap BY Jessica Swenson | May 11, 2026

The Invisalign Story: A Case Study in Marketing a Revolutionary Product

While Invisalign is known for changing lives through innovative digital orthodontics, the company has had to think creatively to actually earn that relevance among its customers and partners.The evolution and strategy behind its marketing approach was discussed by Kamal Bhandal, SVP of the global Invisalign brand for Align Technology, during a fireside chat at From Day One’s Silicon Valley marketing conference. The session was moderated by independent video host, journalist, and producer Claire Reilly.“Really identify the stakeholders in your customer journey, so that you know that you’re attacking points of failures or points of delight,” said Bhandal. Invisalign started by identifying the service providers who would comprise its delivery network, and invited them to help test and refine its products, she says. To maintain the partnership and trust of their clinical partners, the company makes continuous efforts to understand and meet their needs. “We’re looking to understand their business needs, their clinical needs, and the clinical outcomes that they’re looking for, and then designing products that meet those clinical needs,” she said. Kamal Bhandal, SVP, global Invisalign brand, consumer & Americas Marketing at Align Technology, spoke during the fireside chatInvisalign also engages in peer-to-peer training, education, and certification programs to prepare clinicians to use its products, as well as conferences and specialized sessions with deep dives into treatment techniques. Other key stakeholders in the Invisalign customer journey include end users, decision-makers or influencers, and frontline staff. Understanding each of these stakeholders is important, she says, as each can impact those points of failure or delight. The company spent its early days proving that the product worked, before shifting to a lifestyle marketing approach that highlighted how Invisalign could seamlessly fit into consumers’ lives. Continuous innovation prepared the company to manage increasingly complex cases, which broadened its scope. “We always first start with understanding the consumer, understanding the person, and what their lives are like,” said Bhandal. This helps the brand focus its marketing less on product features and specs and more on solving key pain points that matter to the customer. By studying the real lives of teens and parents, from social pressures and confidence issues to practical constraints like family schedules and multiple responsibilities, Invisalign can position itself as a product that reduces friction by fitting into the user’s life rather than disrupting it.She cited two examples that appeal to decision influencers (parents): damage to traditional braces during sporting events can cause emergency orthodontist visits—with Invisalign, these visits are greatly reduced. Additionally, the simplicity of hygiene as compared to traditional braces makes it easier for teens to maintain. For the teens themselves, the draw becomes straighter teeth and increased confidence without the stigma of traditional braces.Solving these problems for families also earns Invisalign its relevance in current culture. “We think about not talking at people, but really creating a conversation and being a part of culture,” says Bhandal. “Brands who integrate into culture, who move at the speed of culture, are brands who win.” Invisalign shifted its branding from a top-down to a community-driven approach, using real stories from patients and doctors to shape the brand. Cultural participation and user-generated content are key.As a healthcare-focused company backed by science and technology, however, it doesn’t tie itself to any one category of social influencers. It partners with lifestyle, fitness, beauty, and health influencers who represent the brand’s typical customers and showcase Invisalign as one part of their well-being process.A core takeaway from Invisalign’s brand evolution is to become obsessed with understanding your customer and what their life is like. “Not through just quantitative data and quantitative data analysis,” said Bhandal, but really dig into who your consumer is, who is influencing the decisions along the way, and what they are thinking about. “Become super obsessed with understanding human behavior of those that are involved in your buying journey.”Jessica Swenson is a freelance writer and proofreader based in the Midwest. Learn more about her at jmswensonllc.com.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)

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Live Conference Recap BY Katie Chambers | May 06, 2026

Cutting Through the Noise With Storytelling That Drives Impact

How much for your Instagram feed, or worse, your email inbox, is filled with AI slop right now? “As our feeds fill up with more mediocre content, and as we’re faced with this information overload, we really need to ensure that our marketing teams are creating messaging that is cutting through,” said Claire Reilly, journalist and moderator of a panel discussion at From Day One’s Silicon Valley marketing conference.In the age of information overload, compelling storytelling can set a brand apart from the barrage of mediocre content. How can marketing teams craft content that truly engages when audience attention is scattered and fickle? Panelists explored this question and more. Unnikrishnan (Unni) KP, SVP, marketing, Americas at Palo Alto Networks, jokes that B2B marketing can easily slump from “business to business” to “business to boring,” depending on the storytelling. “At the end of the day, you’re reaching out to an audience who’s a human being, they are a consumer.” KP says explaining the “nuts and bolts” of a product is important too, but you first “need to connect with the audience and try to see how it attaches to what that person stands for.”Nizzi Karai Renaud, chief brand officer at Zazzle, faces a different challenge: reaching both designers who take their art seriously but also want to make money, and consumers, all who come to the website for a wide range of products and solutions with wildly different tones tied to their personal self-expression. “That’s the core tension in the storytelling,” she said. “The overlap happens at identity,” whether a consumer is buying a product for themselves or someone else. “The product for us is the artifact, but the story underneath is that recognition and belonging is what unites all of this together, that humanity piece.”Panelists shared insights on the topic, "Creative, Results-Oriented Storytelling That Connects"To accomplish this in brand storytelling, Zazzle relies on both user-generated content (UGC) as well as in-house created marketing, all tied back to the humans behind the interactions. “We used to say, ‘Zazzle has millions of designs.’ But what converts much better is saying, ‘Your sister is impossible to shop for—until she isn’t.’ Our technique is to channel the customer’s inner monologue.”Meanwhile, AI is revolutionizing how storytelling reaches customers, as online searching shifts from prioritizing SEO to AEO or GEO instead. “How are you changing your strategy as we go from one of straight clicks to citations and building yourself as an authority in search?” Reilly said. Vidhya Srinivasan, chief marketing officer at Prophix, and her team have been staying ahead of the curve. “Earned media has become very, very important,” she said, citing UGC as one pathway in. “The brand authority is going to go back to the very basics: What are the backlinks? Who are the brands? How are you surfacing?” With AEO and GEO, the priority is now search phrases rather than search words. And KP notes that the bigger challenge will be ensuring that your results land as those “most validated” by AI. Bala Desikamani, VP of marketing at Temenos, offers the three “superpowers” of AI as it impacts marketing: processing massive volumes of data, creating personalized content at scale, and refining analytics to improve forecasting.AI can take that data and help “to triangulate your target and focus on anything that you do,” Desikamani said. “It also gives very useful insight into which type of audience is in [your] market, looking for solutions that you can leverage, and then gives you attributes that help you build stories that resonate to that market set.” AI can provide extremely detailed attributes for the ideal client profile and help dig down to different geographic regions or specific products within a company. It can also help with A/B testing in social media and copywriting. With AI becoming increasingly powerful, it is also inspiring the same fear in workers in all departments from marketing to HR to legal: Will my job be replaced? “AI [is] spewing out 100 creative ideas to everybody and anybody can democratize [them],” Desikamani said. “If anybody can come up with a bunch of creative, how do you create that differentiation? And that is why the human element still comes in,” he said. “Collectively in this room we have so much more intuition than all of AI across the world can ever possess. That intuition is your superpower as human beings. Leverage that intuition, but leverage AI for what it can do, which is to do the grunt work, but eventually you make the decisions.”AI is allowing brands to produce masses of content quickly and cheaply, but that doesn’t mean it’s all high quality, Reilly says, and cynical consumers are getting wary. KP says that working with AI should be similar to the learning process of children—meaning it takes time, practice, and challenge, not just accepting the first answer to your first prompt to an LLM.Srinivasan sees the value of using LLM’s or other creative platforms to create copy, social media posts, and even full webinars. But humans are still needed to “retain the authenticity of the brand. My team uses Claude every day, and every PowerPoint looks the same. There are things that become templatized and boring.”Using AI to increase productivity is fine, Renaud says, “but that final touch, that creativity, it can’t do it yet, and I’m not sure it will get there.” She notes that science has proven consumers make decisions based on their salience or their “gut,” and their gut is often put off by AI, or even human-created content that they wrongly suspect is AI. “That gut check has to exist with humans.”AI still cannot replicate the true authenticity of humans. “Do whatever scientific process you follow to ensure authenticity of your stories and messages,” Desikamani said. “The lines are blurred now between sales and marketing. The biggest barometer of your actual engagement in terms of the quality of your funnel is your conversations and the feedback that comes from sales. Keep it authentic and measure it through the influence that marketing exerts on the actual funnel.”Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost, Top Think, and several printed essay collections, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, On New Jersey, and CBS New York.(Photos by Josh Larson for From Day One)

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What Our Attendees are Saying

Jordan Baker(Attendee) profile picture

“The panels were phenomenal. The breakout sessions were incredibly insightful. I got the opportunity to speak with countless HR leaders who are dedicated to improving people’s lives. I walked away feeling excited about my own future in the business world, knowing that many of today’s people leaders are striving for a more diverse, engaged, and inclusive workforce.”

– Jordan Baker, Emplify
Desiree Booker(Attendee) profile picture

“Thank you, From Day One, for such an important conversation on diversity and inclusion, employee engagement and social impact.”

– Desiree Booker, ColorVizion Lab
Kim Vu(Attendee) profile picture

“Timely and much needed convo about the importance of removing the stigma and providing accessible mental health resources for all employees.”

– Kim Vu, Remitly
Florangela Davila(Attendee) profile picture

“Great discussion about leadership, accountability, transparency and equity. Thanks for having me, From Day One.”

– Florangela Davila, KNKX 88.5 FM
Cory Hewett(Attendee) profile picture

“De-stigmatizing mental health illnesses, engaging stakeholders, arriving at mutually defined definitions for equity, and preventing burnout—these are important topics that I’m delighted are being discussed at the From Day One conference.”

– Cory Hewett, Gimme Vending Inc.
Trisha Stezzi(Attendee) profile picture

“Thank you for bringing speakers and influencers into one space so we can all continue our work scaling up the impact we make in our organizations and in the world!”

– Trisha Stezzi, Significance LLC
Vivian Greentree(Attendee) profile picture

“From Day One provided a full day of phenomenal learning opportunities and best practices in creating & nurturing corporate values while building purposeful relationships with employees, clients, & communities.”

– Vivian Greentree, Fiserv
Chip Maxwell(Attendee) profile picture

“We always enjoy and are impressed by your events, and this was no exception.”

– Chip Maxwell, Emplify
Katy Romero(Attendee) profile picture

“We really enjoyed the event yesterday— such an engaged group of attendees and the content was excellent. I'm feeling great about our decision to partner with FD1 this year.”

– Katy Romero, One Medical
Kayleen Perkins(Attendee) profile picture

“The From Day One Conference in Seattle was filled with people who want to make a positive impact in their company, and build an inclusive culture around diversity and inclusion. Thank you to all the panelists and speakers for sharing their expertise and insights. I'm looking forward to next year's event!”

– Kayleen Perkins, Seattle Children's
Michaela Ayers(Attendee) profile picture

“I had the pleasure of attending From Day One. My favorite session, Getting Bias Out of Our Systems, was such a powerful conversation between local thought leaders.”

– Michaela Ayers, Nourish Events
Sarah J. Rodehorst(Attendee) profile picture

“Inspiring speakers and powerful conversations. Loved meeting so many talented people driving change in their organizations. Thank you From Day One! I look forward to next year’s event!”

– Sarah J. Rodehorst, ePerkz
Angela Prater(Attendee) profile picture

“I had the distinct pleasure of attending From Day One Seattle. The Getting Bias Out of Our Systems discussion was inspirational and eye-opening.”

– Angela Prater, Confluence Health
Joel Stupka(Attendee) profile picture

“From Day One did an amazing job of providing an exceptional experience for both the attendees and vendors. I mean, we had whale sharks and giant manta rays gracefully swimming by on the other side of the hall from our booth!”

– Joel Stupka, SkillCycle
Alexis Hauk(Attendee) profile picture

“Last week I had the honor of moderating a panel on healthy work environments at the From Day One conference in Atlanta. I was so inspired by what these experts had to say about the timely and important topics of mental health in the workplace and the value of nurturing a culture of psychological safety.”

– Alexis Hauk, Emory University