What Chewing Gum Ads Taught Me About Timing, Trust, and Tension
There’s a 2009 Wrigley’s gum commercial that lives rent-free in my brain. A teenage couple sits cheek-to-cheek on a bus. He unwraps a piece of gum. She looks at him. Just before the kiss, the gum drops. That moment? That half-second of tension? That’s better than most Netflix finales.
Gum ads don’t sell minty breath. They sell the possibility of closeness. And they do it with astonishing restraint. It’s a masterclass in storytelling economy. You get 15 seconds. No need for actors to talk. It’s the timing, the glance, the lean-in. Some creatives might call it visual jazz. I think it’s closer to marketing haiku.
So here’s the twist. I went deep. Started watching gum ads from different decades. There’s an insane trend. The ads get louder and worse when trust goes down. When a brand doesn’t trust its audience to get the story, it fills the gap with more copy, more music, more smiles. But the best ones, the transcendent ones, just breathe. They pause. They get close to the moment.
Maybe that’s what brands need to relearn. Not everything needs to shout over the dinner table. Marketing is timing. It’s trust. And if you can hold the kiss just one second longer, you’ve got magic.
Gum ads don’t sell minty breath. They sell the possibility of closeness. And they do it with astonishing restraint. It’s a masterclass in storytelling economy. You get 15 seconds. No need for actors to talk. It’s the timing, the glance, the lean-in. Some creatives might call it visual jazz. I think it’s closer to marketing haiku.
So here’s the twist. I went deep. Started watching gum ads from different decades. There’s an insane trend. The ads get louder and worse when trust goes down. When a brand doesn’t trust its audience to get the story, it fills the gap with more copy, more music, more smiles. But the best ones, the transcendent ones, just breathe. They pause. They get close to the moment.
Maybe that’s what brands need to relearn. Not everything needs to shout over the dinner table. Marketing is timing. It’s trust. And if you can hold the kiss just one second longer, you’ve got magic.