When Mentos Liquid-filled gum was launched in China, the competition had a titanic 96% share of voice in the category. On a budget far outweighed by competition, the challenge was how to stand out and get hard to track Chinese youth to talk about the brand.

The inspiration for this came from the brand platform of “unconventional fun”. Instead of talking about fun we gave ourselves a far scarier objective – attach this new gum to a new behavior, create and spread an unconventional way of chewing gum.

The campaign kicked off on TV, where two guys compete to chew gum into the most ridiculous shapes.Given that Chinese kids spend more time online than with any other media, this silly gum shaping showdown and liquid center product demonstration continued virally, on a desktop clock widget and chat emoticons to give Mentos Gum 24/7 desktop presence.

Likeability of Mentos overall rose from 64 to 79%.

Top of mind awareness of this new product rose to 24% ahead of key competitor brands.

Halo effect on core product. Mentos Candy sales went up by 40% during October 2007 (vs 2006), the month when the Mentos Gum campaign was on-air.People are still chewing their own silly shapes with Mentos gum, even after the ad went off-air.