This chewing gum campaign saved lives

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I’ve analysed hundreds of campaigns over the years, so it takes something genuinely smart to catch my attention.

Recently, I came across a campaign that did exactly that. It was about something serious- saving lives, using something incredibly simple, a stick of chewing gum.

The campaign was called Hero Gum and it is a solid case study for us marketers on how to use creativity to solve real-world problems.

Here is the context. In the US, thousands of patients need stem cell or bone marrow transplants to survive blood cancer. But finding a donor is tough. The barriers to getting donors on the registry are high. People simply didn’t know about it, or they are put off by the registration process, which traditionally involved ordering a kit online and performing a cheek swab.

This is where the strategy stood out. The Gift of Life Marrow Registry partnered with the FMCG giant Mars Wrigley.

They used a simple insight: the DNA needed for a donor match (usually taken from a cheek swab) could also be collected by simply chewing gum.

So, they turned packets of Wrigley’s Doublemint gum into medical devices. They redesigned the packaging and called it "Hero Gum."

The process was incredibly streamlined.

Once chewed for five minutes, potential donors simply placed the gum in the Hero Gum kit envelope and posted it to the Gift of Life offices.

There, the team assigned a unique donor identification number to the sample, and the gum was then sent to a lab for testing.

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Luv