Stride Gum Campaign Satirizes Apple Publicity Machine

The following is an excerpt from an article in 

The New York Times
Monday, August 13, 2012

Stride Gum Campaign Satirizes Apple Publicity Machine

By ANDREW ADAM NEWMAN

ON Aug. 1, a billboard appeared in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan displaying only a date, “08.13.12,” and clues seemed to point to Apple.

Consistent with the style of Apple advertising and packaging, the billboard was black type on a white background and its typeface was a version of Myriad, which Apple uses nearly exclusively. Also noteworthy was the billboard’s location: the intersection of Broome and Thompson streets, 450 yards from the Apple Store on Prince Street.

A SoHo resident, Colin Mackenzie, wrote on Twitter on Aug. 5 that a “big billboard just got put up by my apt with ‘08.13.12’ in what looked like Apple font ... iPhone5 maybe?”

On Aug. 6 on MacRumors, the popular Web site for Apple enthusiasts, “Bendrix” posted a photograph of the billboard and wrote: “What is the meaning of this? Is it Apple related?”

What they were chewing over turns out, appropriately enough, to be gum.

On Monday, the billboard will be replaced by a new one featuring Shaun White, the gold medalist snowboarder, holding a pack of Stride Mintacular, a new flavor that features his likeness on the package.

“Stride Mintacular,” reads the copy, the type treatment again mimicking Apple’s. “Chewing redefined. Again.”

An online video by Stride introducing the Mintacular flavor is shot in the same documentary style as Apple’s product debut videos.

Apple introductory videos, including one for the new MacBook Pro from June that has more than 760,000 views on YouTube, feature designers seated before a white background speaking with awe and wonder about new products. Unlike the Apple videos, Stride uses actors to depict its executives.

“From the moment you pick it up, you instinctively know how to use it,” says an actor in the Stride sendup, as a piece of the gum is shown. “There are no rules at all when it comes to holding it. I don’t need to change who I am to fit the product. It fits me.”

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