Due to the pandemic, consumers were unable to travel, dine in restaurants, or connect with the people around them. While food had been a comfort during the pandemic, it wasn’t a connecting point for people anymore. TUMS wanted help people find the joy in reconnecting with food and each other. As pandemic lockdowns eased and vaccinations were under way, TUMS created an engaging campaign that helped everyone feel included on the fun, providing a variety of ways consumers could join in on our road trip.

Through TUMS Autoburn: America’s Spiciest Road Trip, we aimed to spice things up after a remarkably bland year and set out after some hot goals including: drive awareness through earned media coverage with a benchmark of 230 million impressions and increase engagement and impressions across social channels by 100%.

TUMS tapped spicy food connoisseur and host of Hot Ones, Sean Evans, to serve as our spokesperson, firing up Americans about the road trip.

In partnership with Sean, we selected seven family-owned restaurants to be a part of our road trip. Each restaurant featured different cultures, showed commitment to helping their community, and needed financial relief after a strenuous year.

Sean kicked off the Autoburn Road Trip Sweepstakes, encouraging followers to share photos of how they were spicing up their summers with the food and people they love. Consumers receiving bonus sweepstakes entries for referring friends and sharing on social. Winners received road trip kits filled with essentials to fuel their adventures like gas cards, state-inspired hot sauces, and TUMS products to ease any resulting heartburn. One grand prize winner won an all-expenses paid trip to NYC for four to share a meal with Sean himself at the final restaurant stop of the road trip.

Award-winning Spanish artist, graphic designer, and typographer Alex Trouchut created an in-feed Instagram map highlighting every stop along with seven spicy illustrations, and we released each new illustration ahead of each stop to excite our food-loving fans. These illustrations ran as paid and organic social, in PR kits, and at all live events, inspiring even more people to take their food adventures to the next level.

TUMS organic metrics across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram amounted to 55.9k impressions and 1.5k engagements. Instagram garnered the highest organic engagement across platforms with +1k engagements on TUMS-owned channels across the campaign.

More than 8,500 consumers engaged in the sweepstakes. Over 100 winners were selected during the promotion period to receive Autoburn Road Trip Kits, and a grand prize winner received an all-expenses paid trip to NYC to enjoy a meal with Sean Evans. The campaign generated over 830 million earned media impressions across print, digital, broadcast, and social media, including coverage in target outlets such as People Magazine and Z100.