For over 12 years, TUMS has been fighting the food that gives us heartburn. TUMS’s iconic “Food Fight” campaign consistently delivered; however, the market was growing increasingly more competitive. With the #1 spot among heartburn medications and sky-high brand awareness, TUMS began from a position of strength, but we needed a more distinctive positioning in order to maintain our leadership position and cultural relevance with consumers.
Our goal with the new positioning was to increase household penetration, especially among younger consumers – helping them repair their relationship with food so they can live life to the fullest without the fear of heartburn interrupting. In order to extend our reach and develop multiple touchpoints for our consumers to engage, we needed a creative way to bring the positioning to life and execute it uniquely across broad-reach media channels, social as well as in-person activations.
Today’s world is full of heartburn-inducing moments, both from the foods we eat and the stresses of daily life. Our heartburn sufferers experience the fiery consequences, and are tired of fighting the foods they love – because the foods we love don’t always love us back. We decided to launch an evolution of our masterbrand campaign, declaring the end of the food war and diving into celebrating the most elemental love there is – the love between us and our food. Thus launching TUMS’s new integrated marketing campaign “Love Food Back”.
On TV, we launched a romcom-esque story centered on the love between a woman and her spicy chicken wrap, drawing on the nostalgic plotlines consumers are used to seeing on both the big and small screen.
In social and digital, we adapted that storyline into bite-sized moments that adorned feeds with heartwarming reminders of platform users’ favorite food relationships. These additional assets allowed us to deliver bespoke messaging based on the channel and tout several different product benefits (both emotional and functional).
We brought the campaign OOH by tapping a time-honored setting for passionate eating and classic displays of love: kiss cams at sports stadiums. As official team sponsor of the St. Louis Cardinals, TUMS took over in-stadium kiss cams but with one key difference – instead of finding romantic moments between two sports fans in the crowd, the TUMS Cam spotlighted fans indulging in their favorite heartburn-inducing stadium foods.
The stadium activation was accompanied by an Instagram filter and sweepstakes for those at home. We invited consumers to submit their TUMS Cam moments and enter sweepstakes for a chance to be featured in stadiums across the country. Winning submissions were featured in a :30 that played in stadiums across the country.
And finally, we took our Love Food Back and TUMS Cam show on the road to local food festivals. TUMS appeared at Taste of Buffalo, the largest annual two-day food festival in the United States, and popular food market Smorgasburg in Jersey City. At both sites, a custom-wrapped TUMS truck served up Deep-Fried Tajin Pizza Bites made in partnership with local NY food truck Big D's Grub. A roaming TUMS Cam allowed consumers to snap selfies with their food, and we gave away branded TUMS swag and TUMS samples to foodies experiencing heartburn following their festival eats.
Across the integrated campaign, we kept our campaign tenets as our north star:
— THE NEXT CHAPTER: An evolution of 12 years of food fights
— LOVING FOOD: A “happily ever after” – with food specifically
— ROMCOM STYLE: Embracing that quintessential moment of pure, cheesy love
As the most purchased heartburn brand in the US, TUMS helped 20MM households love food back in 2022. The integrated Love Food Back campaign successfully built on a position of strength to close our Food Fight chapter and start celebrating love across TV, digital, OOH, and live activations.
Love Food Back outperformed TV category norms for ad memorability and brand linkage, as well as drove a 1.3% lift in paid social awareness for the general population (significant given the high baseline) and 2.7% increase for our key A25–34 audience. YouTube media surpassed the video completion rate benchmark by 32%.
TUMS Cam was experienced by more than 7MM in-stadium fans and generated thousands of photo entries showing participants loving their food back – ultimately driving a 60% increase in brand favorability and 40% lift in brand consideration. At Citi Field alone, 88,000 fans saw our TUMS Cam :30 during the 2022 Subway Series.
At food festivals, our pizza bites were served up to over 12,400 attendees. Lines of 30–40 people formed consistently during the two-day Taste of Buffalo Food Festival, and over 17,000 consumers received TUMS Chewy Bites samples and TUMS swag. The roving TUMS Cam led to 400 attendee food selfies; images were shared directly with participants so they could remember and share the delicious moment.
These integrated cross-channel efforts solidified TUMS for consumers as the champion of setting aside our differences with the heartburn-inducing food we love – so we can Love Food Back.
