5 Gum's No Regrets campaign by Energy BBDO featured real senior citizens recounting life's missed moments to redefine what bold living means for a gum brand.
5 Gum No Regrets Reframes Regret as a Reason to Choose Boldly
5 Gum's "No Regrets" campaign is a five-film digital initiative created by Energy BBDO in 2018, in which real senior citizens from multiple countries recount the moments they wish they had seized — positioning the confectionery brand as a symbol of living boldly rather than cautiously.
Mars, Inc. and its 5 Gum brand launched the campaign in the United States in June 2018, with Energy BBDO's Chicago office leading creative development. The campaign was announced publicly on May 17, 2018, as reported by Reel Chicago, and comprised five individual short films, each centering on a different subject and a different category of regret. Specific individuals featured included Guillermo, who spoke about a lost love; Emily, whose cautious approach to life defined her looking back; and Lin, who never fulfilled her wish to leave China. The campaign extended beyond the United States to include the United Kingdom, Spain, and China, per earthling-films.com, giving it a genuinely global footprint despite its American origin and creative base.
In the United States, the campaign operated as a digital-first effort supported by a broader integrated marketing initiative, according to Reel Chicago. Rather than deploying traditional confectionery advertising — product shots, flavour cues, sensory dramatisations — Energy BBDO built each film around documentary-style testimonials. The objective was to extend the emotional territory established by 5 Gum's existing brand platform, "Life Happens in 5," which had been introduced around 2015 and had already moved the brand away from the high-intensity sensory advertising it ran between 2007 and 2014. "No Regrets" deepened that emotional proposition by asking audiences to consider what they might one day wish they had done — and to use that reflection as motivation to act without hesitation. The Clapboard Score for this campaign is 57 out of 100, reflecting strong creative ambition and award recognition weighed against the inherent challenge of connecting deeply human storytelling to a confectionery product purchase decision.
Energy BBDO identified a strategic insight rarely exploited in the confectionery category: the most persuasive advocates for living in the moment are those who no longer have the opportunity. The agency's Chief Creative Officer, Andrés Ordóñez, stated that the goal was to express the meaning behind the "Life Happens in 5" platform in a new way, according to The Drum. That platform had repositioned 5 Gum away from the futuristic, sensation-driven advertising of its launch years — when the brand entered the United States market in March 2007 targeting teenagers, per bakerbranding.com — toward messaging that treated gum as a companion to genuine life experiences.
In the United States, chewing gum occupies a mature and competitive retail segment. U.S. retail chewing-gum sales reached approximately four billion dollars in 2018, representing a meaningful share of total U.S. retail candy sales, according to Food Business News. Approximately 54 percent of U.S. adults chewed gum in 2018, according to gumdemo.com, indicating a broad but not growing consumer base. Within that landscape, 5 Gum competes directly with Wrigley's own Extra and Orbit brands, as well as with Mondelez International's Trident, which holds significant shelf presence across American retail. The challenge for 5 Gum was not category penetration but brand differentiation — a problem solved more effectively through emotional storytelling than through product feature claims.
The decision to cast real senior citizens rather than actors or influencers was central to the strategic logic. Andrés Ordóñez noted that authenticity required sourcing genuine older adults with remarkable stories, as reported by The Drum. This approach borrowed credibility from documentary filmmaking and applied it to a snack brand, creating emotional distance from conventional confectionery advertising and positioning 5 Gum as a brand with genuine cultural ambition in the United States and internationally.
"No Regrets" was directed across four directors. The campaign's five films were helmed by German Mairen, Marcos Mijan, Ross Bolidai, and Daniel Ryan, as credited by Reel Chicago and earthling-films.com. Production was handled by Flare Studio, with Mitch Monzon serving as executive producer and Jenny McDonald as senior post producer, per Reel Chicago. The multi-director structure allowed each film to carry a distinct visual sensibility while remaining coherent within the campaign's documentary grammar.
Andrés Ordóñez, serving as Chief Creative Officer at Energy BBDO Chicago, oversaw the creative direction of the campaign, as named by The Drum and Little Black Book. The campaign's credited creative team also included Josh Gross and Pedro Pérez, whose contributions reflect the depth of craft investment Energy BBDO brought to a project that needed to feel closer to journalism than to advertising. Production credits for the full scope of post-production and editorial roles are partially documented across Reel Chicago and earthling-films.com, though not all below-the-line credits are publicly consolidated.
The visual approach across the five films used intimate, unhurried cinematography — the kind of framing that communicates listening rather than selling. Each subject was given space to speak in extended takes, a choice that aligned with the campaign's documentary ambition and created the emotional conditions for the brand's message to land without feeling imposed. The films were distributed digitally, which gave the production team latitude to work in longer formats unsuited to broadcast. This format choice was strategic: it allowed stories to develop at the pace of real conversation rather than the compressed rhythm of a 30-second spot, reinforcing the authenticity that Ordóñez cited as a creative priority, per The Drum. The campaign's five media assets, as noted at, collectively represent one of the more formally considered narrative executions in the confectionery category in the United States in 2018.
"No Regrets" earned substantial recognition from the advertising industry's most competitive awards bodies. At The One Show in 2019, the campaign received three Merit awards — in Branded Entertainment Single, Film Longform Single, and Content Single categories — as documented at. At the D&AD Awards in 2019, the campaign took two Wood Pencil awards in the Media Use of Talent and Digital Marketing Use of Talent categories, alongside an Online and Viral Films nomination, per. At Cannes Lions 2019, the campaign was shortlisted in the Mobile Influencer and Talent category, according to. The Webby Awards also recognised the campaign with two nominations, as noted at.
No verified commercial performance data — including sales lift, brand equity movement, or digital reach figures — is publicly available for the "No Regrets" campaign. What the awards record does confirm is that the campaign achieved credibility with creative and media juries across multiple disciplines: entertainment, longform film, digital marketing, and talent integration. This breadth of recognition suggests the work operated effectively across the dimensions of storytelling quality, media strategy, and talent sourcing — all three of which were structural commitments embedded in the campaign's original brief. For a confectionery brand operating in a mature U.S. market, the ability to generate cultural conversation through documentary-format digital content represents a meaningful strategic outcome, even where quantified commercial impact remains undisclosed. The Clapboard Score of 57 out of 100 reflects this balance: genuine creative distinction rewarded by peer recognition, set against the structural difficulty of converting existential narrative into measurable snack-category behaviour.
5 Gum's "No Regrets" is a five-film digital campaign created by Energy BBDO in 2018. It features real senior citizens from the United States, United Kingdom, Spain, and China recounting life's missed opportunities, connecting their reflections to 5 Gum's "Life Happens in 5" brand platform to encourage bold, present-moment living.
Energy BBDO Chicago created "No Regrets" for Mars, Inc.'s 5 Gum brand. Andrés Ordóñez served as Chief Creative Officer, with Josh Gross and Pedro Pérez also credited. The campaign was produced by Flare Studio, with Mitch Monzon as executive producer, across four directors including German Mairen, Marcos Mijan, Ross Bolidai, and Daniel Ryan.
"No Regrets" won three Merit awards at The One Show in 2019 and two Wood Pencil awards at D&AD, as documented at clapboard.com. It was also shortlisted at Cannes Lions in the Mobile Influencer and Talent category, and received two Webby Award nominations, reflecting recognition across entertainment, film, and digital marketing disciplines.
"No Regrets" extended the "Life Happens in 5" platform introduced around 2015, itself a departure from 5 Gum's original sensory-focused advertising. Per bakerbranding.com, 5 Gum launched in the United States in 2007 targeting teenagers. "No Regrets" represents the campaign's most emotionally developed expression of that platform shift toward meaningful life-moment storytelling.
Authenticity was the stated creative priority. Andrés Ordóñez explained, as reported by The Drum, that the team sourced real older adults with remarkable stories to ensure the films felt genuine. Casting actors would have undermined the documentary credibility that gave each subject's account — and by extension the brand's message — its emotional weight.
The Clapboard Score for "No Regrets" is 57 out of 100. This reflects the campaign's strong creative ambition, multi-body award recognition at The One Show, D&AD, and Cannes Lions, and its formally considered documentary approach, balanced against the structural challenge of linking deeply human narrative storytelling to a confectionery purchase decision in the United States market.
.webp)
Creative Collaboration Platform: The Backbone of Modern Creative WorkWhat is a creative collaboration platform?Clapboard defines a creative collaboration platform as the operational core for today’s distributed creative teams. This is not a collection of digital collaboration tools stitched together; Clapboard’s system
Understanding the Creative Production MarketplaceWhat is a Creative Production Marketplace?Clapboard defines a creative production marketplace as a structured ecosystem where brands, agencies, and production talent converge to execute video, advertising, and branded content at scale. Unlike the legacy agency or freelanREAD FULL ARTICLE
The Urgent Need for a Creative Production Operating SystemWhy Traditional Creative Production Models Break DownClapboard sees the creative production landscape shifting under pressure. Content velocity is no longer a buzzword—it’s a mandate. Modern advertising demands relentless output across dozens of channels, each wREAD FULL ARTICLE
.jpg&w=256&q=75)
