Orbit Gum Creates Stickiness With Facebook Design Contest

Wrigley’s Orbit gum has jumped on the crowdsourcing bandwagon, inviting the public to engage with the brand from a design and customization perspective, via packpage designs on a Facebook app. Live through February, the app pulls data from a user’s profile and generates a custom gum pack design for every participant, “essentially making each person’s Facebook life a work of art.”

The contest leverages infographics technology and the design skillz of EVB (Evolution Bureau) digital artist Joshua Davis, known for building algorithmic systems, although anyone can now audition to be a digitally crowdsourced artist. Facebookers can solicit votes for their package designs and the winner could even hit store shelves in 2012.

The FB app is the second phase of Orbit Spotlight Series, the brand’s digital marketing campaign for its fruit-flavored Remix line of gum. Last spring, college students majoring in design and art and communications programs were invited to participate and hundreds of entries were submitted.

Eight winners were chosen for Orbit’s latest gum flavor, Melon Remix, being rolled-out at national retailers including Wal-Mart. Two of the eight winning package designs came from University of Missouri students; Brad Siegler, 20, of Hazelwood, and Emily Herron, 20, of Monroe City, Mo., who will each receive $5,000 in cash and the reward of seeing their design and personal signature on gum packages across the country.

Siegler, a musician, was inspired by a cassette tape for his design, paired with a retro color scheme; while Herron used summer’s bright, vibrant colors for her design, photo-shopped to resemble a summer landscape reports stltoday.com.

Open to US residents, Orbit plans to introduce as many as 60 new pack designs for its Remix flavors in the coming year. Thanks to digital tools, anyone can — chew on this — have their 15 minutes plus of Warhol-ian fame.