The Brief

We targeted all chewing gum category users. They were familiar with Doublemint’s history of connecting people, but the brand had lost relevance in recent year. We needed to approach ‘connecting people’ in a new way. This group was more connected than any in history, but they were feeling increasingly disconnected and ill-equipped to make and keep connections due to pace of life and stress. So instead of talking about connecting, we turned every stick of Doublemint into a media space which could be used as a gesture of connection to help ease this tension in their lives

Creative Execution

When other new brands, new products and new flavors of gum come into market, we turned our products into our own biggest media space, which is the traditional 5 stick pack that hasn’t changed for 30 years, and we made a very good use of the double arrow on each stick, we printed gum messages inside the double arrow, people could use these printed gum messages to make or keep a connection proactively, they could engage with our products and at the same time the brand message “connecting people” is well delivered through this engagement effectively.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

On the packaging of each stick of Doublemint, we printed a conversation starter. Messages such as, “Don’t worry – I’m here now” and “Why haven’t we met earlier?” offered easy talking points for people to interact over. Now, instead of just offering someone a stick of gum, people could use Doublemint to make or keep a connection. With nearly 100 gum messages, we created interesting encounter stories to demo the fun of passing gum messages to make connection. For example, a Love Letter to Dad was composed by different gum messages to encourage youth to express their love to Dad.

Results

Our audience was quick to share their own connection stories. One even used Doublemint's gum messages as a marriage proposal. Short video content inspired 40,146 8 second consumer videos, or 3.7 days of Doublemint branded content, the highest ever total on the Weishi platform Social media content created over 1.5 billion unpaid impressions, or 10 times the amount of paid impressions, nearly doubling the value of our total social media spend We halted 11 straight months of value share losses, actually gaining 0.5% share, which is substantial in the context of an industry worth $2.8 billion annually