Professional Courtesy Thomas Giacobbi, DDS, FAGD Editorial Director, Dentaltown Magazine


What’s in Your Cabinets?


Thomas Giacobbi, DDS, FAGD
Editorial Director,
Dentaltown Magazine

Each year we provide the dental community with an opportunity to share information about the products and services you use in your practice every day. The Townie Choice Awards strips away the complexity and confusion surrounding other awards and takes the ballot directly to the people. We want every dentist in our community to vote on the Townie Choice Awards because your voice has an impact on our profession. Dentists use this annual survey to make purchasing decisions and manufacturers get a peek into their product penetration on the front lines. Over the years I have fielded several frequently asked questions. Here is a simple guide to the Townie Choice Awards.

How can you say something is the best?
This is an opportunity for every dentist in our community to share information about the products and services that they use every day. Certainly, if a product is not living up to expectations, it will not win an award. If it works and they use it the most it must be good.

Why are some products missing?
Any dentist who has seen a copy of the Henry Schein dental catalog understands that there are thousands of dental products on the market. The Townie Choice Awards ballot represents a certain amount of products and services that we believe are the most widely used. In other cases a product is missing because its use is so narrow that it does not fit into an existing category and we want to represent products that compete with others to determine the dentists’ choice. Finally, while every dental company is invited to enter products in the categories represented, some choose not to participate. Please remember that every question has the option for a write-in vote to accommodate a missing product or company.

Why do some questions on the ballot list a company name or family of products, rather than a specific product?
This is simply an effort to simplify the number of choices on the ballot as there are many product categories where a company may have many versions of the same product. If we listed each one, the ballot would be too cumbersome and tedious. A good example of this need is burs. The companies that manufacture burs offer many different sizes, shapes and grits. In the context of our survey, we want to know the brand of diamond you are most likely to use above all others, and the same for carbides.

What does it mean when a company wins a Townie Choice Award?
The sample size of dentists in this annual survey is large enough to make the results a strong predictor of market penetration in many of the categories included on the ballot. In simple terms, the products that win are often the most popular in that particular category and many would conclude the best in class. Of course we realize that most categories have multiple products that are very effective in their category and for that reason we provide results beyond first place.

What’s in it for the voters?
Any Townie who finishes the ballot is automatically entered into a $1,000 drawing. The winner will be drawn in October and will also appear on the cover of the December issue of Dentaltown Magazine, in which we reveal the results of the Townie Choice Awards. Please take a few moments to vote for your favorite products and services in the annual Townie Choice Awards ballot. Visit the home page of Dentaltown.com and click on the Townie Choice Awards icon in the menu on the right-hand side of your screen to begin voting.

Thanks in advance for your participation.
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