Fantastic Freebies: Stride Gum

Stride is one of those companies that's very skillful at marketing in what some call the post-advertising age. They have YouTube videos, contests, games. Earlier this year they put their weight behind a petition to stop the directing career of Uwe Boll (a German director who turns video games into movies.) They pledged to give away a million packs of gum if the petition got a million signatures.

The latest giveaway is a mock lawsuit that you settle and get a free pack of gum. The conceit is that the company is attacking customers to get them to spit out their long-lasting gum so they will have to chew a fresh piece.

Basically Stride just comes up with amusing, publicity-catching ways to give away its gum. One previous giveaway was for a Battle of the Bands. Maybe they gave up on enough people caring about Uwe Boll. So far only 292,607 have urged him to quite.