A n d r e w s G u m W o r l d

IMAGE: New York Times

 Yesterday’s New York Times featured Dentyne’s new campaign designed at re-launching its Dentyne Ice brand and takes on, perhaps, an even larger issue than fresh breath — whether the Internet (which AndrewsGumWorld can only assume you’re using to read this) and technology are driving us further apart. It’s a worthy question, perhaps, and certainly an interesting one to tackle in a gum advertising campaign, but so Dentyne has. (Incidentally, Dentyne has also launched down a  companion website, makefacetime.com, that shuts down after three minutes — you can even edit the clock that counts down your time to look like an egg timer, alarm clock or odometer and more — to make sure that we get back to our lives)

Here are some details from the Times article:

BORED subway riders and air travelers in major American cities might have noticed — right around the time they were itching to get back on an Internet connection — a series of ads encouraging them to “power down, log off, unplug … make face time.”

The brand with the temerity to tell us to disconnect from our totally wired lives? Dentyne chewing gum.

The campaign, called “Make face time,” was created by McCann Erickson for Dentyne, a brand owned by Cadbury, the No. 2 gum maker in the United States after Wrigley. The ads feature happy people embracing and kissing — their breath presumably freshened by Dentyne — as an alternative to pounding their BlackBerrys or sending electronic messages to their Facebook friends.

…people under 20 are the most avid gum chewers, the industry says, and the Dentyne campaign touches on the explosion in digital tools that help those young people connect, share and network. But it also seeks to make customers stop and question whether all that online communication is really making them closer.

“Everyone loves technology and everyone uses it,” said Josette Barenholtz, the marketing director for Dentyne. “What’s meaningful is being reminded that being face to face can’t be substituted.”

That strategy could be a gamble, as the ads focus on exactly the people who are most passionate about these digital tools.

chewing gum art., originally uploaded by urzzz.

AndrewsGumWorld repeats this evocative image not because it’s forgetful about what it has posted before, but because it joins with New York City (and not in a glib way either; there is absolutely no connection to be made between chewing gum and the horrific event that happened on this day seven years ago) in thoughts and prayers as the city, a country and this world remembers and honors the terribly sad anniversary of 9/11.

 Australia’s Herald Sun publishes an editorial in tomorrow’s paper (it’s that whole International Date Line thing; hang on tight) titled “She’s, like, not cool,” which is about McCain’s running mate Sarah Palin, who is, according to writer Alan Howe, “colourful, opinionated, forthright, forceful and, if the polls are right, headed for the role of deputy to the leader of the free world.”

It’s not the most positive editorial in the world, with unfavourable comparisons made to the executive experience of the premier of Tasmania while also referencing Palin’s views on guns and her home church (and also mentions the grizzly bear that graces her office…a bear shot by her father).

But what really gets the writer is how Palin talks and that, of course, is what caught AndrewsGumWorld’s attention:

Notwithstanding her serious education, Palin favours the language of the inarticulate gum-chewing teenagers who populate disposable American sitcoms — she calls her husband the “first dude”.

And this was her response when speaking to members of her church in June about some tattoos her son had recently acquired: “Before he enlisted (in the US Army) he had to get his first tattoo, and I’m like, ‘man, I don’t think that’s real cool’,” she managed.

“Until he showed me what it was and I thought ‘oh, he did something right’ coz on his calf was this big old Jesus fish.”

Mind you, on his shoulder was “this big old map of Alaska”.

They called me HALF-Stiiiick, originally uploaded by KarenDinino.

p align=”left”>Yesterday’s Evening News, from Edinbugh, reported on a gaffe by Sir Bob Geldof (you’ll remember him, if you’re old enough, from Live Aid, and if you’re even older, The Boomtown Rats) during an interview on Radio Forth, in which he encouraged teachers to excuse children from school to join in a Making Poverty History march on July 2 during G8 meeings, which will be held in Italy next summer — even though the date of his march falls during Scottish school summer holidays.

His appeal was made just following an impassioned speech to the Scottish Parliament, a speech with spoke specifically against alleviating poverty in Africa and suggesting that  the cost would be quite small for the citizens of each country represented by G8 — and Geldof used just the right kind of metaphor to make his point:

Yesterday, Sir Bob told the Scottish parliament it would cost every citizen of the G8 the equivalent of half a stick of chewing gum a day to alleviate poverty in Africa…

(PS: And special thanks to Karen Dinio from Flickr for the great shot illustrating that said half-stick of gum daily that would be needed, relatively — and financially — speaking from the citizens of G8 countries to alleviate poverty on a continent where there is desperate need).

In this weekend’s Daily News, Sri Lanka’s national newspaper for the last 90 years, there is an article poking fun at the UNP (United National Party), which has now lost the last 18 national elections, a record for a party in that country. In the article, “Ranil, why are you running…,” allegedly gives the minutes of party meeting, that discussed a recent humiliating defeat by the party in the most recent PC (Provincial Council) elections.

In the midst of the supposed meeting discourse, there is commentary on the supposed inability of Ranil (Ranil Shriyan Wickramasingh, leader of the UNP and of the Official Opposition) to sell chewing gum to Moneragala:

Gamini Dissanayake: Sir, our man even cannot market the ‘chewing gum’ he once promised farmers in the remote Moneragala area…. Leave alone his bracelet talk…

Anandatissa De Alwis: Sir, being an Advertising and Marketing man, I can say that Ranil didn’t know that chewing gum was never a product that could be marketed in an agricultural area….(laughter)

Gamani Jayasuriya: Sir, somebody should have told the chap, ‘Meheta hariyanne Bulath Vita’.