refreshing the STALE everyday with mentos

CANNES 2025 - ONE SILVER, ONE BRONZE, 7 SHORTLISTS

unlocking a fresh mindset

Mentos was getting dusty. Seen as a brand that belonged in dad’s glovebox, it lacked relevance with Gen Z.  We already had a platform — Yes to Fresh — but it was rooted in an old idea of freshness as confidence. It needed more than a polish. It needed purpose. Play. And refreshed energy.

The Insight

The everyday sucks. Schedules, algorithms, small talk, the same routes and routines — Gen Z feel stuck in the same-old. But they’re not looking to run away from it. They were remixing it. They’re looking to refresh it. To find new energy in old places. A little spark. A moment of levity. Something — anything — to break the monotony.

The Strategy

Grounding Mentos freshness as the antidote to the stale everyday. From freshness = confidence (an overused category trope) to freshness = anti-boring mindset.
Old story: Mentos gives you the confidence to say yes to unexpected adventure.
New story: Mentos gives you the fresh mindset to disrupt the everyday, every day.

It wasn’t about travel or thrill-seeking anymore. It was about reframing the routine. Finding joy in the middle of monotony. Turning small moments — a meeting, a lecture, a queue — into something new, fun, and maybe even ridiculous.

THE WORK

We launched with a classic. A traditional Mentos ad, but with a fresh twist. A stale everyday scenario, until Mentos flips the moment. The film established Mentos as a cheeky presence in the everyday — not trying too hard to be cool, just lightly refreshing life’s flat moments.

Then we dialled it up to 11. Bringing Mentos back into culture by refreshing something it already owned — the famous Mentos + Cola experiment — in a space Gen Z love: Fortnite.

And one of the most exciting partnerships was born: Mentos x Fortnite, which took a fizzy science experiment and turned it into a cultural moment. We launched the Mentos Fizzooka — a custom, in-game rocket launcher built around the fizzy chemical reaction — giving players an unexpected weapon in their arsenal and a fresh twist on gameplay. The fun didn’t stop there: we teamed up with YouTube creators The Hacksmith to build a turbocharged, real-life version of the Fizzooka, shooting soda geysers with the force of a firehose. With plenty of fizz left in this insane experiment, we sent 30 replica Mentos Fizzookas out to selected influencers around the globe to try out for themselves, under carefully controlled conditions.

The results? Winning the hearts of Gen Z and winning big at Cannes 2025!

A strategic refresh that delivered just the hit we needed to get back into culture and the minds of Gen Z globally.