A n d r e w s G u m W o r l d

IMAGE: Users Experiential

In our post earlier today, we shared a (widescreen!) video featuring part of an innovative chewing gum campaign conducted by Mentos Gum in Canada earlier this year.

Hessie Jones’ Toronto-based blog hessiej.com goes behind the scenes of the campaign, which encouraged consumers to suggest what they’d do to make the world go rounder. As Jones notes in her post, the campaign was designed to focus on life’s simple pleasures:

The premise: Make Your World Go Rounder was meant to be light-hearted and fun, and make Canadians smile by reminding them about life’s simple pleasures. According to Alison Neil of Cossette [the agency that created the campaign], “In the competitive and cluttered gum market we wanted to bring attention to a product feature of Mentos Gum, their roundness (the only round gum on the market), hence “make your world go rounder… we certainly consider this campaign to be non-traditional. We decided to develop an experiential/User Generated Content campaign to engage consumers, develop a dialogue with them and enhance their brand experience.”

The campaign included a website where individuals could post their own suggestions (a screen capture of the website is above), and the winning suggestion included what became a fun park for grown-ups (complete with inflatable slides) in Yonge-Dundas Square in Toronto this past August.

Jones’ post includes a video of the winner of the contest, Danielle Lamarche, and the fun in Toronto that grew out of her idea…

D+H, originally uploaded by meighan w..

xxi, originally uploaded by oh.death.

Speedway, originally uploaded by JTWilcox.

Today’s Hometown newspaper from suburban Detroit reported on a gum related burgalry at a local Speedway gas station.

As the local crime watch article reports, under the heading “Sticky Fingers”:

Twenty-one boxes of chewing gum — containing 244 packs of assorted varieties — with a retail value of $339 were reported stolen Aug. 28 from a Speedway gas station on Sheldon Road. The theft occurred between 9 p.m., Aug. 27, and 6:30 a.m. the next day.

A police report said a security video shows two different men standing by the gum display, at different times, during the period the theft occurred. One appeared to have an accomplice who was distracting the attendant near a Lottery machine, police said.

Skybirds Chewing Gum Trading Cards - 1941,
originally uploaded by Thomas Duchnicki.

IMAGE: Gum-Out

The aptly named  Gum-Out, with its chewinggumremoval.com site (a mission statement in a website URL!), proposes to eliminate the somewhat ineffective methods of freezing, humble ice cubes and chemicals from the gum removal process. Instead, with syringes, spatulas and gloves, this new product aspires to consistently and effectively break “the bond between the chewing gum and the surface” (to which it’s stuck).

The British website for the company includes testimonials, ordering details (one kit is good for up to 125 discarded pieces of chewing gum), the benefits of Gum-Out, its uses on clothing, in transport, the home, in leisure and entertainment venues, and in schools. As one testimonial on the site notes, the Backwell School in Bristol has happily experienced many of those potential benefits in their trial use of the product:

As a result of your recent mail shot we purchased a batch of your product, GUM-OUT. I must say with slight misgivings, as most gum removal products are not as good as claimed.

However, the problem with gum being a serious nuisance, we decided to give GUM-OUT a try. To our surprise the product certainly handles the job very well even on hard, stamped-in gum. We have used your GUM-OUT on carpets, curtains and children’s clothes with great success and will certainly re-order when supplies run short. May I also add that GUM-OUT is easy and reasonably clean to use.

With many thanks from the cleaning and care taking staff,

Yours faithfully,

Caretaker, Backwell School, Brisol, UK

Chewing Gum Vending Machine_Hellas, originally uploaded by penjelly.

 
Lotte Green Gum Machine, originally uploaded by kshibano.

We can thank Greek engineer/mathematician Hero for creating the first vending machines in 215 BC (coins for holy water).

In 1888, the first US vending machines made their appearance on New York City subway platforms, thanks to a familiar force in the history of gum: Thomas Adams.

There’s a great site called gumballs.com which provides an overview of chewing gum itself and, as you might guess, the history of gumball/gum vending machines, including these insights:

Vending machines finally made their United States debut in 1888 when the Thomas Adams Gum Company installed machines on subway platforms in New York City that vended Tutti-Frutti gum. In 1897, the Pulver Manufacturing Company added animated figures to their vending machines, which provided added entertainment for the customer as the figures would move once coins were deposited into the machine.