How Pentonic GumStik Made a Gum Stick the Hero of a Child's Imagination
Pentonic GumStik's "The Aviator" is a 2022 Indian digital film created by Wunderman Thompson Kolkata that dramatises the product's super sticking power through the story of a ten-year-old boy who builds an airplane model and watches it take flight, positioning GumStik as a creative enabler for children in the household products and stationery category.
Pentonic is a writing instrument brand from the house of Linc Limited. With an ambition to broaden its product portfolio beyond pens and writing tools, the brand entered the stationery and adhesive category with the launch of Pentonic GumStik, a glue stick built around a core promise of super sticking power. "The Aviator" is the flagship digital film released in November 2022 to introduce that promise to the Indian market, where school-going children and their parents represent the primary audience.
The film centres on a nerdy, airplane-obsessed ten-year-old who uses Pentonic GumStik to construct a model aircraft. Once assembled, the plane is thrown into the air and embarks on what the film frames as an epic flight, rendered through a visual storytelling approach that leans into childlike wonder. A distinctive dimension of the creative is its sound design, which builds on the authentic behaviour of children using vocal sound effects while playing with toys and models. That detail — the kid as his own sound engineer — gives the film an emotional texture that separates it from straightforward product demonstrations. In India, where the stationery category is deeply tied to school culture and parental aspiration, grounding the campaign in a child's self-directed creativity is a deliberate and culturally resonant choice. The campaign was published on November 9, 2022, and classified under the household products industry with a single media asset in digital film format.
Pentonic GumStik entered the Indian glue-stick market as a new challenger. As reported by MARKETECH APAC, the adhesive segment in India is one that has been defined and created by a dominant incumbent, making GumStik's market entry a task requiring clear differentiation rather than category education. The strategic decision to anchor the brand's first major communication around child creativity and airplane model building is therefore not incidental — it is a deliberate pivot away from functional comparison and toward emotional ownership of a creative use-case.
Wunderman Thompson Kolkata partnered with Linc Limited on the Pentonic brand from 2019 across multiple product and format launches, according to medianews4u.com, giving the agency accumulated knowledge of how the brand speaks to younger audiences. That continuity matters. Rather than introducing Pentonic GumStik through a price or performance comparison with established competitors such as Fevistik by Pidilite — the category's dominant brand in India — the campaign sidesteps direct confrontation and instead stakes a claim on imagination and play. The protagonist is not a student under academic pressure but a young enthusiast driven by passion, which shifts the emotional register from utility to aspiration.
The choice of digital film as the sole media format reflects the brand's understanding of where its target audience's parents consume content in India. Digital penetration among urban and semi-urban households has expanded the reach of short-form video substantially, making a well-crafted digital film an efficient vehicle for a new product launch. The campaign targets school-going children and their parents simultaneously, addressing both the end user of the product and the household purchasing decision-maker through a single piece of storytelling. That dual targeting efficiency is structurally sound for a brand entering a category with constrained launch budgets.
Wunderman Thompson Kolkata built "The Aviator" around a creative insight rooted in observable child behaviour. The film does not rely on animation or special-effects spectacle to sell super sticking power. Instead, it uses the credible, slightly dishevelled world of a ten-year-old's bedroom and the genuine acoustic texture of a child making airplane sounds with his own voice to create its sense of wonder. That restraint is itself a craft decision: the vocal sound effects double as both a production technique and a character detail, telling the audience something true about how children inhabit their own imaginative worlds.
The creative leadership at Wunderman Thompson Kolkata on this campaign includes Arjun Mukherjee, Senior Executive Creative Director and Vice President, and Diptanshu Roy, Senior Creative Director, both credited on the project according to medianews4u.com. Vijay Jacob Parakkal, Managing Partner at Wunderman Thompson Kolkata, oversaw the broader partnership with Linc Limited, as reported by medianews4u.com. Soumya Chowdhury, Vice President and Chief Servicing Director for Client Servicing at Wunderman Thompson Kolkata, is also credited on the project per medianews4u.com. The involvement of senior creative and servicing leadership across the board signals that despite being a single digital film asset, "The Aviator" was treated as a significant brand-building moment for a product making its first impression on the Indian market.
The film's narrative arc — building, launching, flight — maps directly onto the product's functional promise of super sticking power without ever reducing itself to a demonstration. The airplane model is not a prop illustrating adhesive strength in a clinical sense; it is the vehicle through which a child's personality and passion are expressed. That alignment between product truth and emotional narrative is the central craft achievement of the execution. The digital film format, published November 9, 2022, carries a single media asset and reaches its audience through online distribution in India.
"The Aviator" recorded 9,745 views and 183 likes on its archived YouTube asset. No verified comment data is publicly available for the film, and trade coverage of the campaign is limited, with the most substantial third-party write-up being a November 22, 2022 article by Teddy Cambosa published in MARKETECH APAC. No indexed coverage has been identified in Campaign, Ad Age, Adweek, The Drum, or Contagious, as noted in research compiled by clapboard.com.
The view count places the film within the modest range typical of category-entry digital launches for challenger brands in India, where organic discovery without paid amplification is structurally limited. The 183 likes relative to 9,745 views produces an engagement ratio that reflects a niche but attentive audience rather than broad viral traction. The campaign was not designed for scale in the conventional sense; its structural purpose was to establish a creative identity and a product promise for a new entrant. On that narrower objective, the film performs its function. The dual address to children and parents, the distinctive vocal sound effects, and the emotionally coherent use of an airplane model as a demonstration device all contribute to a memorable first impression for Pentonic GumStik in the Indian household products and stationery space.
Clapboard rates "The Aviator" at 63 out of 100, reflecting a well-intentioned and competently executed debut that is held back by limited distribution reach and the absence of measurable broader impact data. The creative idea is genuine; the production ambition matches the brief; the gap lies in the campaign's overall market penetration given the scale of the incumbent it is challenging.
"The Aviator" is a 2022 Indian digital film introducing Pentonic GumStik's super sticking power. Created by Wunderman Thompson Kolkata, it follows a ten-year-old airplane enthusiast who builds a model aircraft using the product, with the film's distinctive vocal sound effects reflecting authentic child play behaviour. It was published in November 2022.
Wunderman Thompson Kolkata created The Aviator for Linc Limited's Pentonic GumStik brand. Senior creative leads on the project include Arjun Mukherjee as Senior Executive Creative Director and Vice President, Diptanshu Roy as Senior Creative Director, and Vijay Jacob Parakkal as Managing Partner, according to medianews4u.com.
Pentonic GumStik targets school-going children and their parents across the Indian household products and stationery market. The campaign uses a child protagonist building an airplane model to simultaneously address the product's end user and the household purchasing decision-maker through a single digital film narrative.
The Aviator builds its sound design around children using vocal effects while playing with toys, as reported by MARKETECH APAC. Rather than using conventional music or voiceover, the film's protagonist generates airplane sounds himself, grounding the creative in an authentic behavioural insight and reinforcing the child creativity theme central to the campaign.
Clapboard rates The Aviator at 63 out of 100. The score reflects a competently executed creative debut for a new product entrant in India's competitive adhesive market, with the film's genuine storytelling approach offset by limited distribution reach and the absence of broader measurable performance data beyond its archived view and like counts.
The Aviator avoids direct comparison with established Indian adhesive competitors such as Pidilite's Fevistik, instead staking a creative claim on child imagination and airplane model building. This positioning sidesteps functional benchmarking and instead builds brand identity around emotional ownership of a creative use-case in the Indian stationery category.
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