Life Savers: Sweet story, bitter truth

Life Savers was an iconic but struggling brand. Wrigley, its new owner, wanted to re-energize it with a national advertising campaign. Could we make a tired old brand relevant again?

But there was one major problem—the company never evaluated whether Life Savers was actually worth advertising in the first place. The product had low margins, meaning even a massively successful campaign wouldn't generate enough profit to justify the investment. Unfortunately, this realization came only after the campaign was completed and tested.

The solution

We developed a campaign that tapped into nostalgia and modernized it for a polarized world. The insight: even small acts of kindness deserve recognition.

  • Brand Positioning: “It’s Good to Be Sweet” – reinforcing the emotional value of kindness and Life Savers literal sweetness

  • Consumer Research: Deep customer conversations revealed that nostalgia and simplicity were key drivers.

  • Creative Execution: We created a integrated marketing campaign that ranked among Wrigley’s highest-testing ads ever for brand recall, likability, and purchase intent.

The result

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The campaign was wildly successful in testing—it would have sold boatloads of Life Savers.

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It won multiple prestigious awards for creative and strategic excellence.

skull

But in the final hours before launch, Wrigley realized that Life Savers’ low margins made national advertising a bad business decision. They pulled the plug and redirected the media spending to higher margin products in their portfolio. All that great work never saw the light of day.

Even perfect advertising can’t fix a flawed business case. Before investing in marketing, companies must ask: does this make financial sense? Wrigley’s mistake wasn’t in hiring us — but in not validating the product’s business viability before doing so.

This reflects my agnostic approach to helping clients — I don’t push for more marketing when it’s not the right solution. I focus on what’s best for the business, even if that means challenging assumptions before the work begins.