Spit It Out Adventure
- Brand
- Stride
- Year
- 2008
- Objective
- Engagement
- Industry
- Food & Drink
- Mechanic
- Arcade & Action
- Platform
- Web
- Agency
- JWT
- With
- Rokkan
Objective
Stride launched in 2006 as "The Ridiculously Long Lasting Gum," built on the joke that the flavor lasts so long the brand itself has to beg people to spit it out and start a fresh piece. JWT and digital agency Rokkan built "Spit It Out Adventure" to hand that joke over to the audience: instead of hearing Stride ask for its gum back, players got to be the one taking it. The game was one piece of a wider push — TV, social profiles, contests, gaming tie-ins — meant to build a cult following among young chewers in the US.
Solution
On the stridegum.com microsite, the player signs on as a Stride "agent" whose job is to pull gum out of people's mouths. Each mission opens on a live-action clip of a chewing target, and the player types in key commands to go after it. Depending on the command, one of three pre-shot video sequences plays out the extraction, with a set of over-the-top "Super" extractions reserved for the boldest moves. The same site carried a couple of companion games built the same way — a dodgeball match and a round where the player pries out a wad of gum with chopsticks — so a session could carry over from one extraction to the next.
- 1
The player enters through Stride Gum's browser microsite, a single Flash movie navigated by hash-based sections that houses a set of playable games alongside the brand's ad content.
- 2
Opening "Spit It Out Adventure" casts the player as a Stride agent whose mission is to make gum chewers spit out their gum.
- 3
Each target is presented as live-action video of a person chewing gum rather than an illustrated level, and the player attempts to take the gum by punching in keyboard commands rather than clicking.
- 4
The keypress resolves into one of three video extraction sequences, with a "Super" extraction as the exaggerated best-outcome payoff.
- 5
Extraction methods vary, such as pulling the gum out with chopsticks, and a session can carry on into the microsite's other bits, like its dodgeball game.
