It’s Back, Baby: Rehoming America’s Beloved Vintage Gums
Strategy
Branding
Marketing
Social Media
Design
Design & Development
Photography
Objective
Gerrit J. Verburg Co., a long-time retailer of some of America’s most notable vintage candies, tasked Pure Strategic to promote the return of the nostalgic brands Black Jack, Beemans, and Clove chewing gums.
DISCOVERY
A thorough evaluation of the industry and competitive space uncovered many possibilities in creating a home for Black Jack, Beemans, and Clove. We identified online conversation already happening about the gums, as well as speculation as to where they might be purchased. This presented us with a solid opportunity to give the gums a permanent online presence and digital introduction, and to put an end to any uncertainties that the gums are back for good.
STRATEGY
To address the discovered needs, Pure Strategic decided to utilize modern platforms to embrace the nostalgic-rich history of the brands. It was decided that we needed a digital hub where we could conglomerate information about the gums, capture emails, and direct customers to the point of purchase. Furthermore, with the wealth of the gums’ history, we wanted to make it easy for customers to share fond memories they have with the products in the past. While it was important to ensure that connection with past customers, we also wanted to generate opportunities and promote trial with new ones.
Tactics
- Establish thorough brand direction that suits the unique design, voice, and tone of Black Jack, Beemans, and Clove chewing gums.
- Curate an innovative, horizontally-scrolling website that appeals to a broad range of consumers.
- Design the website with a hyper-focus on interactivity, conversation, and education about the gums.
- Stand up and curate unique digital presences across four social media platforms.
- Develop an elaborate prospecting campaign to announce the return of the gums through hyper-defined targeting on social media and the Google advertising network.
- Capture visually compelling photography of the products that balances modernity with the immediately recognizable branding.
- Curate original content catering to each persona.
- Conceive and drive marketing campaigns announcing “It’s Back, Baby!”
Photography
For products with immediately recognizable coloration and packaging, capturing high-definition and creative product photography is key. Our in-house photography team staged, shot, and edited a series of photographs of the gums in packaging, in use, and in the limited edition gum tins released by Gerrit J Verburg Co. in November of 2019. The photography was intended to capture the attention of a broad audience and to highlight and complement the unique, immediately recognizable branding of Black Jack, Beemans, and Clove.
REsults
It was an honor and a privilege to be the agency to reintroduce these three iconic brands: Black Jack, Beemans, and Clove chewing gums through an engaging, information-rich website, social media sources, and extensive reintroduction campaigns.
Client Feedback
Working with Pure Strategic over the last 6 months has been a pleasure. Their knowledge of the industry is second to none and Chris and his team have went above and beyond on all of our requests. We have had Pure Strategic help us with the relaunch of our Vintage Gums - Black Jack, Clove, and Beemans. We began with a marketing campaign and them building a website to increase and drive traffic to educate the consumer of the rich history and provide them with a store locator to buy the product. Not only did they come up with a plan, they explained to us the importance of each step and educated us along the way to increase our knowledge of the social media and digital industry. Pure Strategic is full of great ideas for advertising campaigns and always execute them exactly as envisioned. We could not be happier that we chose Pure Strategic to work with for all of our marketing needs.— Joe Foguth, Gerrit J. Verburg Company VP Marketing
Pure Strategic
