The Campaign

The objective is to reincrease the share of Bubblicious in Japan. Currently the chewing gum market is dominated by sugarless gum and the share of the sugared “Bubblicious” had continued decreasing. Basically, kids are absorbed in digital games and we can rarely see them blowing bubblegum. Therefore, we decided to focus more on its “fun” aspect by repositioning Bubblicious as a playing tool. From a psychological point of view, target consumers of Bubblicious (mainly male teenagers) have strong desire to compare their own ability and struggle for mastery with friends in order to be accepted among their peers and friends. To leverage this insight, we formed a virtual club BA-BU (Bubbleclub) for which the concept is based on Japanese extra-curricular school activities called “BU-KATSU”(BU means “club”). Through BA-BU, we prepared a stage where they could compete with each other using this new “edible tool”, by demonstrating number of bubblegum techniques.

Success of the Campaign

Sales volume of its major flavor, grape, increased by 54%, resulting in 20% increase of the total sales from pre-campaign figures. As a result, we were able to stop the decrease of market share of the global brand Bubblicious in Japan for the first time since launch in 1979. From the consumer aspect, Bubblicious, at only about 1 US dollar, offered Japanese teenagers who were completely absorbed in digital games, the fun of playing with friends without the use of batteries or devices. In addition, since their parents happen to be the “1st Bubblicious generation” in Japan, it gave them a chance to brag about their bubblegum-blowing skill toward their kids, who had never tried bubblegum blowing in their entire lives. We feel that our activities slightly contributed to improvement of the current situation of poor parent-child communication trend today.

Describe how the campaign/entry was launched and executed across each channel in the order of implementation.

We appointed a man talented in bubblegum, Mr. Tasuku Wada, as a strict coach. We developed 31 original bubble gum techniques. We developed a website which contains a database of bubblegum techniques and system for accepting movies/ photos of playing techniques from BA-BU members. We posted videos of the actual performances by BA-BU coach on the website and they were picked as one of the recommended videos of Youtube. We held “ALL JAPAN BUBBLEGUM CONTESTS”, a national competition for club members to compete showing their bubblegum techniques. At final, winners of east and west Japan competed. We continuously delivered the message through magazine tie-in ads in a major comic magazine for teenagers, “KOROKORO Comic” that has a circulation of 1,000,000. Through these activities, our coach was invited by national TV network programs that are quite popular among the young generation as the guest to demonstrate his bubblegum techniques several times.