Orbit Gum lives to give its chewers confidence in their social lives. But over the past 20 years, the gum category has lost the minds and mouths of young people. We needed to rebuild relevance with <25 consumers where they need confidence the most: dating. Importantly, we had to reach them in the online platforms where modern dating exists.

‘Dating’ is big business in the US with over 110 million single people at any given time – a big opportunity for a brand offering fresh breath. And online dating, specifically, has turned into a culture-driving force for singles. Half of young Americans have used a dating app, creating a whole new world of digital behavior and faux pas. Chief among those faux pas: dirty messaging.

As a brand that’s been known for ‘cleaning up’ dirty mouths, we realized DMs needed more cleaning than our mouths ever did.

Online dating has gotten dirty. Millions of daters on Tinder have received an unsolicited dirty message, but no one has ever provided the means to respond to all the eggplants, DTFs and dirty pictures in people’s direct messages.

Introducing the Orbit Dirty Dating Response Tool, a comprehensive collection of unique video and GIF response content Tinder users can access to reply to their dirty messages in real time, all without ever leaving the app.

In doing so, we encouraged better matches, more in-person dates, and more reasons to chew Orbit Gum.

The strategy was built with an “inside-out” approach. We wanted to first and foremost appear naturally in the dating and messaging environments where dirty dating takes place. Our partnership with Tinder included match ‘cards’, allowing users to ‘swipe right’ to our profile and open our chat bot. There, Chris Parnell could guide users through our dirty dating responses. We also directed users to their built-in Giphy keyboard to share the content.

To make sure we caught people outside of the Tinder platform, we utilized social channels with chat functionality like Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook to share some of our best response films. These films raised awareness about the Giphy keyboard and further assisted organic uptake.

Finally, we utilized social influencers like @Betches -- known for dating content -- to authentically spread our campaign.

First, we analyzed behavioral and usage data to identify the dirtiest messages on Tinder. We then armed the over 50 million daters on Tinder with 30+ unique response videos and GIFs for ANY dirty message they may receive, from eggplants to DTF messages to dirty pictures.

All our content featured celebrity talent, Chris Parnell, playing a dad-like character giving a modern interpretation of the “the talk.”

Best of all, daters could access our content at various touchpoints throughout the platform without ever having to leave the app. We created an in-app chatbot, which helped guide users to the appropriate response for the dirty message they received. We also partnered with Giphy to integrate our content into their already existing Tinder messaging keyboard.

Within just a few weeks, our response generator had over 9 million active users. Our on-platform content achieved engagement 45% higher than Tinder benchmarks, and our chat messages achieved click-through 113% above Tinder benchmarks.

But perhaps the best measure of success was the content’s spread off the platform, with over 50MM earned GIF views as young people used Giphy to share our responses on the full spectrum of messaging apps.

We set out to reach young people in their online dating environments, rebuild gum relevance through the chatbot experience, and get users to share the content. Our results showed that we were successful on all fronts. We not only reached them in dating environments, but managed to engage them too. Earned Giphy views proved our responses were widely shared, showing that Orbit Gum is once again ingrained in dating.