Mars gum brands enlist a piano-playing goat and a Bonnie Tyler parody to tackle overthinking

Mars’ chewing gum business OEFY, which covers Orbit, Extra, Freedent and Yida, has released Total Overthink of The Head, a spot built on a parody of Bonnie Tyler’s 1983 power ballad Total Eclipse of the Heart.

Although it launched on April Fools’ Day and is every bit as daft as the day’s pranks, the ad is a genuine campaign.

In the film, a goat at a piano accompanies a group of high school students who sing passionately about their everyday worries, including “50 posts and only one like from Phil”. Surrounded by floating memes, the teenagers identify these worries as overthinking, and the remedy offered is gum. “So my crush does like me, right?” one asks. “Bahh, have another piece of Extra, dude,” the goat replies.

Gum as a circuit-breaker

The spot is the latest development of the brands’ Chew Good platform, which aims to bring new chewers to the market leader by presenting gum as a way to break the cycle of overthinking. Mars has said that young people, the campaign’s target audience, are especially prone to overthinking, and that the confusing and combative world of social media can make it worse.

The campaign runs across online video platforms as part of a wider social plan. It follows work with Omnicom agencies BBDO Chicago and adam&eve\TBWA on several extensions.

These include Chew Ratings, a social idea that ranks overthinking scenarios by the height of a stack of gum pieces, and Channel Your Inner Goat, a live experience on TikTok in which viewers could “feed” printed versions of their thoughts to real goats.

Credits

Total Overthink of The Head was created by BBDO Chicago, with Mars Wrigley chief brand officer Rankin Carroll on the client side. Brian Billow of O Positive directed, with editing by Arcade, colour and VFX by JAMM, and music by CAYA Music and Sound. Chew Ratings and Channel Your Inner Goat were created by adam&eve\TBWA, with Vivid Broadcast handling live production for the goat stream.