Starburst Chew the Clue Case Study
Industry: Confections
Service: ITG EXCITE®
A Teen-Fueled Promotion That Turned Curiosity Into 5 Million Calls
Starburst wanted more than a short-term sales spike. They wanted a promotion that felt like the brand: bold, fruity, and a little bit daring. By co-creating directly with teen consumers, they transformed a simple “win a prize” offer into a mystery experience that teens could literally chew on.
10
Teen-powered promotion concepts developed
5 million
Hotline calls logged
35%
Sales lift during the promotion
The Challenge
The Starburst team came in with a clear mission: create a promotion that would reinforce brand equity, build buzz in the marketplace, and excite a demanding teenage audience. They needed something that felt big, fun, and easy to join—without losing the core of what makes Starburst, Starburst: bold fruit flavor in every bite. To succeed, the promotion had to balance mystery and simplicity, deliver lots of winners (not just one big prize), and give teens a reason to keep coming back.
What Success Looked Like
Design a promotion that felt like a branded experience, not just a sweepstakes—simple to join, easy to replay, packed with lots of winners (and a few big “wow” prizes), and built to amplify Starburst’s fruit-forward equity and real teen buzz.
How We Got There
ITG recruited and trained teen Starburst consumers as Creative Consumers® associates for a high-energy promotion ideation session. In the room, these 16- and 17-year-olds built new ideas alongside the Starburst team, sharing the types of promotions they actually wanted and why. Together, they defined clear “must-have” qualities: lots of winners, simple mechanics, and a playful, slightly edgy tone that felt true to teens.
With those guardrails in place, the client team and teen Creative Consumers® associates co-created a broad range of promotion territories and built them into 10 distinct concepts. These concepts then moved into quantitative testing to identify which idea would deliver the strongest mix of excitement, clarity, and brand fit. One concept rose to the top: Chew The Clue.
Chew The Clue turned every pack into a game. For a limited time, each package of Starburst included one Mystery Flavor piece. Consumers called an 800-number to register their guess, could call back with new guesses any time, and learned instantly if they had won. The mystery built intrigue, the guessing mechanic made it fun and repeatable, and the prize structure offered both big “wow” rewards and plenty of everyday wins.
The Results
Chew The Clue delivered on both excitement and performance. In addition to headline prizes—35 Grand Prize trips to Hawaii, 2,000 First Prizes (including gear like knapsacks and Starburst radios), and 5,000 Second Prize beach towels—teens saw the Mystery Flavor piece itself as a prize in every pack. Participation was easy, interactive, and rewarding, keeping teens engaged throughout the promotion.
The promotion hotline logged 5 million calls—far exceeding the 1–2 million originally expected—and drove a 35% lift in sales during the promotion period. The focus on mystery flavor reinforced Starburst’s fruit-forward brand equity, and the promotion has been recognized internally as one of the strongest in M&M Mars’ history.
This project used ITG EXCITE® — Communications and messaging development designed to excite your audience.
Turn Promotions Into Participation
When you build promotions and activation platforms directly with your core consumers, you create experiences they want to join, replay, and share. ITG EXCITE® helps you turn raw consumer energy into promotion concepts and messaging that are simple to understand, on-brand, and built for real engagement.