In her episode of Carpool Karaoke, Sia explained that she chooses to cover her face in public because she felt like the one thing that was missing from pop music was "mystery." In a lot of ways, mystery is also missing from advertising, especially when it comes to ads targeted toward kids and teens. Commercials and campaigns for these audiences are usually flashy and outright, hoping to make the product stand out and look as cool and desirable as possible, and often, this approach does work. However, one popular ad campaign that took a different approach with a little more mystery was the "How it feels to chew 5 Gum" series by Wrigley.
This campaign for the relatively new 5 Gum product began in 2007 and used sensory imagery to sell not only the product to tweens and teens, but to sell the experience of chewing flavored, sugar-free gum in TV spots, magazine ads, and more. In this marketing campaign review, we'll discuss the marketing strategies Wrigley's used in the "How it Feels to Chew 5 Gum" campaign and how the campaign was able to reach its target teen audience.
Main Marketing Strategies in the 5 Gum Campaigns
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Bold, sensory imagery. Part of the 5 Gum mystery was the name, which turns out to be a reference to the five senses. Fitting, then, that the entire "How it Feels to Chew 5 Gum" campaign was based on intense imagery that draws on sensory experiences. When you think about it, this is an extremely clever way to describe how something feels and tastes to someone who has never felt or tasted it — by relating the experience to something they can see and understand how it might feel. The ads and commercials in this campaign drew on dim lighting and what seemed like a secret, underground lab as a set where the unique experiences were performed as "experiments." To get a better idea of the type of imagery in these commercials, check out this example.
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A memorable slogan. We've already mentioned it several times, but the slogan associated with the campaign, "How it Feels to Chew 5 Gum," became pretty well known shortly after the commercials started airing. The tagline is so recognizable, in fact, that it even became a popular meme when it was paired with any funny or unusual video. This slogan was often used in conjunction with the brand's other tagline, "Stimulate Your Senses," and reinforced the point that chewing 5 Gum is a unique experience.
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Coordinating packaging. The look and feel of the 5 Gum campaign was also carried through the gum's permanent packaging design. A 5 Gum packet was easy to pick out on a store shelf because of its black sleeve with neon trimmed logo and text. The design recalled the dark tone of the advertisements and looked sleek and cool, like something a teen would want to carry in their pocket or purse as opposed to the primary colors of many other gum options. The detail in 5 Gum's packaging helped to fully carry out the mysterious edge that was advertised in the commercials and other advertisements.
How 5 Gum Appealed to the Teen Segment
With the distribution of the 5 Gum campaign, the key to reaching the younger audience that the content would appeal to was placement. The "How it Feels to Chew 5 Gum" commercials aired often on TV networks that kids and teens watched, like Cartoon Network and MTV. The campaign included ads in popular teen magazines at the time, and even received prominent product placement in the wildly popular video game Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. By choosing these distribution channels for their product launch and subsequent campaign, Wrigley established that 5 Gum was designed for the teen segment. Even as recently as 2018, 5 Gum was still making the effort to reach younger audiences with its "No Regrets" campaign, focusing on elderly interviewees describing to young people things they regret missing out in their lives.
While I would usually take as objective a perspective as possible in these campaign reviews, I feel it's necessary to acknowledge my own personal experience in this example. When 5 Gum's advertisements started popping up everywhere in 2007, I was a preteen myself, and I remember these ads being everywhere. Even to this day, I will sometimes think of the imagery in these commercials and remember how much they influenced me. For whatever reasons, the campaign worked on me and my friends: we thought 5 Gum was really cool. Its edgy advertising made us want to buy it. While I can't speak for every member of 5 Gum's target audience, this campaign was, at the very least, successful with me.
