Mentos recently reworked the two most memorable expressions of its brand, updating its iconic jingle and bringing the soda geyser experiment to Fortnite. Both efforts speak to how marketers can tap into nostalgia to reach both longtime customers and younger generations.
The Perfetti Van Melle candy brand on April 1 relaunched the jingle across social, digital and audio streaming platforms iHeart Radio and YouTube Music. But instead of the original ads from the ‘90s that proved so memorable — if cheesy and spoofable — the brand tapped creators Adam Waheed, That’s a Bad Idea and Aubrey Gavello to make Mentos ads in their own image.
“We wanted to make sure that we revisited this iconic jingle, but make it a little bit more relevant for today’s scenarios,” said Jen Redmond, gum and mints category director at Perfetti Van Melle. “It’s a fun way to reintroduce the catchy melody that many know and love and still remember, but also make sure that it’s relevant for those who don’t remember it.”
Reaching old and new consumers could help Mentos cash in on a booming candy market that topped $54 billion in sales in 2024 and is forecast to exceed $70 billion by 2029, according to a National Confectioners Association report. Gum and mints saw 1.9% dollar sales growth in 2024, outpacing chocolate (0.4%) but behind non-chocolate candy (4.9%) in Circana-measured channels.
Instead of making a pinstripe suit on a freshly painted bench, the influencer-created ads find absurdity around parking problems, office mishaps and housecleaning mistakes that could resonate more strongly with today’s consumers. Similarly, the next phase of the campaign, launching May 1, will update the jingle’s lyrics in ads featuring musical comedians Carter Vail and Kyle Gordon, the latter of whom has gone viral on TikTok with his genre parodies. In both phases of the jingle relaunch, finding the right influencer partners was key.
“One of our most important lenses when trying to find an influencer partner is making sure that it is the right fit for our brand and they can understand what we’re trying to communicate in an organic way to their own platform, to their own audience,” Redmond said.
Introducing the Fizzooka
Reaching audiences on the platforms where they spend their time is also the driving force behind Mentos’ Fortnite activation. The brand and agency BBH London last month created a custom rocket launcher within gaming platform Fortnite Creative, turning the soda geyser associated with the brand into the “Mentos Fizzooka.”
The item was dropped into popular maps that have a combined audience of more than one million players per day, on average, updating an enduring part of the brand’s lore that continues to live on in science experiments and social media clips.
“Similar to our jingle, it is crazy how many people still do the Mentos-Diet Coke experiment,” Redmond said. “We wanted to take that iconic experiment that others are still doing today, leverage that, but also try to connect with the Gen Z audience. We know Gen Z: Gaming is life for many of them.”
The Mentos Fizzooka — an activation created independently from Fortnite maker Epic Games — demonstrates how marketers continue to look for ways to bring their brands to life in gaming platforms. The activation gives Perfetti Van Melle some control over an increasingly unsettled media world and economic landscape, whether facing the delayed ban of TikTok or the impact of the Trump tariff regime.
“Staying nimble is important. We have to just control what is within our control. Any kind of good marketer is going to have some contingency plans,” Redmond explained. “Given today’s environment, always keeping the consumer in mind first, and what they’re doing and being where they’re at is going to be important. If something becomes not available, there’s going to be other ways we’re going to look at how we can reach our consumers.”
