If sharing Mentos Gum leads to Fresh Connections, why would we allow sampling teams reap all the benefits?

The creative idea started small with finding an incoming freshman and offering them an amazing challenge: Share enough gum to make a Fresh Connection with everyone on campus during welcome week to win a year of tuition — plus a free Top 40 concert for the whole school.

The stakes were high enough to draw interest on campus. But that wasn’t enough. The sampling activation needed to be made into something people would pay attention to no matter where they lived or went to school. The race-against-time challenge could become an incredible journey ripe for real-time storytelling, social media content and 360-degree amplification.

We challenged our willing freshman, Sam, to give away 43,000 bottles of Mentos Gum during six days of live events. We blanketed campus with billboards, banners, posters and table tents featuring his likeness and our hashtag, #SamHasMentosGum. Within a day, Sam was constantly swarmed and Snapped by his classmates.

In total, we conducted 21 activations, which reached students everywhere, from dining halls to libraries. We threw a massive celebration of Sam on the field at the home-opener football game while DJ Khaled posted messages on Instagram and Snapchat and participated in a national media tour. Our social amplification resulted in thousands of suggestions for Sam on our website.

By the end of the activation, students were roaming campus to find Sam and help him succeed. He completed the challenge and became a campus legend — especially after he introduced DJ Khaled at our free-for-students concert later in the fall.

"A new chapter will soon be added to the long history of brands that give their stuff away. It’ll be about Mentos," Adweek wrote.

#SamHasMentosGum scaled from a local execution to a national interest story by earning 300MM media impressions in the space of a week, and as Hurricanes Harvey and Irma earned around-the-clock coverage. That didn't stop us from earning coverage from ESPN, E! Online (including its Snapchat show, "The Rundown"), Billboard, Elite Daily, VIBE, Trend Hunter and Marketing Daily.

Monthly engagement rates doubled for both the Mentos Facebook and Instagram accounts. Unaided top-of-mind awareness among 18-to-29-year-olds increased 250% over the prior month.

Paid media — including campaigns with YouTube, Spotify, BuzzFeed and College Humor — drove 400MM impressions. According to Spotify, our campaign blending audio and video ads on the steaming music service achieved "the highest click-through rates [Spotify has] seen." The campaign microsite achieved 250,000 visits.