Awarded Best Contribution to Societal Change in 2025 PRCA Awards.
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The Gum Litter Taskforce is an annual campaign that aims to educate and heighten awareness to change public behaviour regarding gum disposal across Ireland. The taskforce which is funded by Mars-Wrigley involves a collaboration between Government, local authorities, and Food Drink Ireland to tackle the issue of gum litter in the most sustainable way – by changing public behaviours through education and awareness – encouraging the public to dispose of their gum in a responsible manner. The campaign has been running since 2007. In 2022, Drury was tasked with revitalising the campaign for its fifth cycle, using fresh social tactics, broadening its reach among the campaign’s core demographic of 16 – 24-year-olds.
Approach
To effectively reach the 16–20-year-old demographic, Drury worked with Mars-Wrigley and the taskforce to implement a multi-facted PR approach leveraging platforms like Instagram, Tik Tok, Snapchat to create engaging content that resonates with younger audiences. This included interactive posts, challenges and influencer partnerships to spread the message about responsible gum disposal.
Adapting the existing strategy while also focusing on audiences that needed more attention, Drury worked with GLT to leverage core demographic’s interest in environmental activism as a means of improving engagement, adding messaging on the negative environmental impacts of gum and wider litter with the campaign. We created a dual strategy of maintenance to reinforce the work to date and an engaging awareness and education campaign to target a younger audience highlighting environmental messaging that resonated with them.
The campaign involves two physical roadshows – one Summer Roadshow carried out in conjunction with local authorities and a school roadshow the ‘Bin It! Roadshow which engages with primary and secondary schools across Ireland.
Both roadshows include interactive and educational elements to promote proper gum disposal in an engaging and memorable way that are amplified across media to broaden the campaign’s reach.
Drury developed and delivered an integrated campaign built around media relations, stakeholder and influencer engagement, emotive video content and highly shareable activations to resonate with the target audience and drive national conversations. This created strong shareable content. We also developed an appropriate channel strategy to engage the key audiences prioritising Twitter/X for stakeholders and Instagram for a younger audience. Using research and having identified the need to shift the focus to a new and younger audience, we also expanded the campaign to include a TikTok influencer element, allowing us to reach and engage with our hard-to-reach core target audience.
In addition to the social media activity, we continued to amplify the campaign across traditional media channels. We arranged a launch photocall, and an immersive activation roadshow that travelled across the country, working with the local authorities and the public to promote responsible gum disposal behaviours in a fun and engaging manner. Collaborating with HEADCASE, Drury used the GLT social channels to do pre and post event content for maximum reach and engagement while supporting each location with a regional media outreach.
Outcome
The campaign had a resoundingly positive influence on encouraging responsible gum disposal behaviours.
Gum as a proportion of litter dropped to a record low of 8.6% in 2023, according to the National Litter Pollution Monitoring report, with 2024 surveys found that 92% self-report as ‘always’ or ‘usually’ putting their chewed gum in the bin – another record high.
The campaign expanded its digital presence to include designated Instagram, Twitter/X and TikTok channels, and also embraced influencer content across Instagram and TikTok. These owned channels have significantly increased the campaign’s reach.
A reenergised campaign resulted in significantly expanding reach via the implementation of a new integrated strategy across social, digital and traditional media.
The campaign received a nomination for Best Native Campaign at the Irish Digital Media award for its partnership with Goss Media.
In June 2025 the campaign won a PRCA Award in the category for Best Contribution to Societal Change.