Brand: Orbit Gum (Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company)
Execution: TV, Web, Phone
Link: Click Here (to see the spot, click on ‘Dirty’)
Target: Mis-spent Youths
Rating: ** (TV)/ **** (phone)
Reviewer: David

Description:
A TV campaign that has a series of spots featuring unlikely events and an attractive British woman in aviation outfits who gives the bad protagonists a chance to clean up their act with Orbit Gum. In this spot, Snoop Dogg is addressing a high school class, telling them about life as a gangster. He has apparently said something shocking, as all of their mouths are hanging open. Then a hole opens in the floor and he is sucked down to hell where a group of middle-age women are having a social in a living room with a red couch and flames on the ceiling. Each of the women is dressed in red and sports a set of horns in the middle of her forehead. As Snoop looks around, perplexed, one woman says, “Welcome Mr. Snoop. Your dirty mouth has landed you here with us. FOREVER!” Suddenly, the blonde British bombshell in a snug pristine white balooning outfit, holding a goat on a leash appears. “Dirty Mouth?” she says, “clean it up with Orbit Peppermint.” Snoop is suddenly transported to heaven, where attractive women in white lingerie lounge. “Fabulous!” the woman says and then “For a good clean feeling, no matter what,” She says and the goat bleats.

What Works:
Wm. Wrigley has done a great job encouraging its agency Energy BBDO to produce fresh, courageous and unexpected advertising. This advertising blog has been very impressed with the campaign for Winterfresh, although we were somewhat less enthusiastic about the campaign for Juicy Fruit.  Still, Wrigley understands that advertising in a world with TiVo, YouTube and SubZero refrigerators requires bold attempts to break through the clutter.  This distinctly odd spot as well as those which precede it in this campaign qualify in this regard.

There is good branding in this spot as the Orbit Gum package makes an appearance in the middle of the spot and is instrumental in saving the [anti-]hero from his doomed fate.  The positioning is not unique to the category, but cleaning up dirty mouths does put orbit in a distinctly different place from other Wrigley brands.

The online element of this campaign is also ingenious.  Website visitors are encouraged to sign up for a Snoop Dogg personal call, during which he gives them a code to unlock sites of the website that are initially blocked.  Although it is not clear what Wrigley will do with this information (particularly the phone numbers given the size of the national Do Not Call registry), it is an impressive method of data gathering which seems to take a lesson from the rampant popularity of celebrity ring tone downloads.

What Doesn’t:
Although the impact of this spot is impressive, the brand logic is impenetrable.  Does Orbit save bad people from fates they deserve?  Does cleaning up your mouth after the fact excuse anything?  How is Orbit unusually or uniquely able to do this?  This spot does not answer these questions - it does not even attempt this.  The answer instead is that the advertising is about showing something odd and cool, repeating it enough to associate it permanently with the brand and then hope that it will make the brand cool and desirable in the process.  It is a strategy that works for a very few brands and only when the advertising is consistenly unique.  We don’t think these spots make that cut.

Branding Bottom Line:
Orbit convinces us to stop hanging out with Snoop Dogg.

Brand: Juicy Fruit Gum (Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company)
Execution: TV
Link: Click Here (It is the first ad entitled ‘Gum-Chewing Killer Ant’)
Target: Gum-Chewing Pet Lovers
Rating: ***
Reviewer: David

Description:
A man in a bathrobe picks up a frisbee and whistles, saying “Here, boy! Fetch,” as he throws the frisbee. A giant ant, acting very much like a black Labrador, catches the frisbee in its mandibles in mid-flight and brings it back to the owner. The man pulls out a stick of Juicy Fruit Gum and as the ant displays interest, holds it up, getting the ant to stand and jump for it. When he does not ultimately give the Juicy Fruit gum to the ant, the ant snaps at him and the owner scolds it saying, “BAD!” The ant cringes for a moment as a dog would, then rears up and knocks the owner across the yard, screaming. The man jumps in his car to escape the enraged giant ant which proceeds to pull the door off the car and drag him down an ant hole. The spot ends with the words, “Gotta Have Sweet?” and then another screen saying “Gotta Have” with the Juicy Fruit package below.

What Works:
The animation in this spot is spectacular, giving the giant ant hungry for Juicy Fruit a very real and believable presence and personality. The surprise (the ant taking the place of the dog) gets the attention and is arguably ‘Tivo-proof’ for the adolescent and young male target audience who will be arrested even at fast forward speeds. The brand gets good visibility with the introduction of the gum in the first half of the spot. The product is the hero here (which is a good thing because the man doesn’t put up much of a fight) and does not get lost in the humor.
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What Doesn’t:
This advertising blog often cautions brands about the dangers of both humor and pets and this spot has both. Our primary concern is that the brand will get lost in a spot that is far more memorable for the supporting characters and story line. “What gum was that?” is the imaginable question after an office co-worker describes the spot and we are not certain that the answer will be ‘Juicy Fruit.’ This is also ultimately image advertising as the ‘Gotta have it’ proposition for the brand is generic to the category.

So the effectiveness of the spot ultimately rests with the distinctiveness and continuity of the campaign it sits on. If Juicy Fruit can sustain a years-long campaign with spots as well-executed and distinctive as this one - which look and feel much the same way, this spot works. If the brand is erratic or the executions do not reinforce each other, the money will have been wasted. Altoids is a great example of a brand able to take quirky, distinctive but potentially overwhelming spots and link them to a campaign which reinforced the brand. Wrigley must do the same with this Juicy Fruit spot.

Branding Bottom Line:
Juicy Fruit convinces us to stick to AKC breeds.