Tic Tac Goes Little in First Big Work With The Martin Agency
Advertising Age, By Jessica Wohl
Tic Tac is jumping back into marketing with a new brand effort suggesting people take time to appreciate the little things in life -- including, of course, Tic Tacs.
The effort comes after the Ferrero USA brand picked Interpublic Group's the Martin Agency as its new agency in December, following a decade with Omnicom Group's Merkley & Partners. The Martin Agency worked on Tic Tac's Minions-themed packages tied to the 2015 summer movie, but this is the first big brand messaging change in more than three years.
Tic Tac had been using the "Shake It Up" slogan since early 2012, when the brand really began to shift more of its attention from TV to other areas.
"It kind of put us on a multimedia platform, it gave us a great kind of voice for social media," Tic Tac Marketing Director Todd Midura said of the "Shake It Up" marketing. However, it lacked a really big product insight "that we could really hit home with the consumer," he added.
Now, armed with a new ad agency and a new CEO -- former A-B InBev marketer Paul Chibe recently came on board at Ferrrero's North American division -- the brand is using two :15 TV spots and a variety of social and digital elements to promote happiness in the smaller things in life. The idea came from spending time with millennials and others who almost reject "that bigger is better and more is more," said Mr. Midura. Unlike some other generations, he feels the brand's younger consumers have "a real focus on those little things in life really meaning a lot."
Mr. Midura did not divulge specific spending plans for the campaign, set to kickoff with TV on Friday evening. He said spending would largely be in line with what the brand has done before, while using a variety of methods to try and make a bigger impact with that budget.
Online components include a pre-roll ad disguised as a screen with the spinning center that sometimes plays before an online video loads. Instead, the spinning center is made of Tic Tacs.
