By Francis Nicholson
We all know advertisers are great at pairing useless products with emotions that have absolutely nothing to do with what’s for sale. Case in point: When you think of romance and falling in love, of course you think of sugar, dextrose, corn syrup, gum base, tapioca dextrin, and titanium dioxidemade combined into a pellet you put in your mouth and chew on. I mean, like, who doesn’t? Wrigley’s has released a sappy and soppy one-minute mini-movie that’s been garnering lots of free advertising, in line with many other companies who now set out to get their crappy ads to go viral. What better way is there to appeal to the youth audience’s wishful thinking that they could be that hot girl or guy in the advertisement buying gum and giving to whoever strikes their fancy than a video making its rounds among millions? If you can stomach to watch it until the end, he creates an art exhibition of doodles he did on the back of Wrigley’s gum wrappers, containing key moments in their relationship, because, of course, the fuckwit couldn’t somehow manage to find a piece of paper. My feeling is that if Durex took the same story and replaced chewing gum wrappers with used condoms, it would translate into an even more romantic and intimate story.
Note: In the “about us” section, it was promised that some of this content would be puerile, which was confirmed when I showed my wife this article and she said, “Seriously, sometimes your humour is that of a 12-year-old boy,” which was exactly the answer I was hoping for.