• by Steve Ellwanger , October 8, 2020

Iconic candy brands Tic Tac and Bazooka are responding to the increased demand by consumers for more fruity flavors, along with -- in Bazooka’s case -- the popularity of gummies.

Ferrero says its four-flavor Fruit Adventure version recently became Tic Tac’s best seller, so it’s adding to that line with Big Berry Adventure -- a mashup of raspberry and blueberry. 

“We’ve seen a bit of a change in terms of consumer behavior, with more demand for fruity flavors,” Felipe Riera Michelotti, vice president of marketing, Tic Tac North America at Ferrero USA, tells Marketing Daily.

This week, 51-year-old Tic Tac also launched a new campaign,“Refreshing Moments,” positioning the product as a respite from pandemic-related stresses.

A 15-second spot opens with a woman working on a laptop computer at home. When she spots a container of Tic Tac, she smiles, pops one and then dances across the room to share with her laptop-absorbed boyfriend.

A voiceover accompanying the image of a white mint says “100 layers of flavor” and closes with “refreshing moments are just a Tic Tac away.”

With the new campaign, “what we’re looking for is to target that 18-35-year-old consumer, because they will relate a lot with the situations that we’re showing in the ad,” says Michelotti.

“It was all based on the context that we’re living in right now,” addressing factors like “stress from working at home and remote learning.”

Meanwhile, Bazooka doubles down on its presence in the gummies category with the launch of the Totally Awesome brand in strawberry, raspberry, grape and watermelon. Available in the shapes of dragons and unicorns, Totally Awesome has retail distribution at checkouts in Walmart stores nationwide.

It’s very, very competitive,” Elizabeth Mangold, director of innovation and e-commerce for Bazooka, says of the checkout space at Walmart.

Totally Awesome launched on Amazon.com last month and is currently unavailable on the site. “They sold out really quickly,” Mangold says.

According to Nielsen data, dollar sales of single-serve gummies rose 19.5% in the 52-week period ended Sept. 26 versus the same period a year earlier. Sales of multi-serve gummies increased 9.9%.