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

The three “R”s. Reading, ‘Righting, and ‘Rigley’s.,

originally uploaded by Hamlet Haoi.

 As AndrewsGumWorld has talked about before, Wrigley, the company that makes the Official Gum™ of Gum Guy has now been sold to Mars, as this morning Chicago Tribune reports:

Shareholders of Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. on Thursday approved the sale of the company to Mars Inc., a $23 billion transaction that will end the independence of one of Chicago’s most venerable companies.

The deal is expected to close within two weeks, when Wrigley will become part of privately held Mars, creating the world’s biggest confectionary company. Wrigley, whose shares have been publicly traded since 1923, will remain based in Chicago as a subsidiary of Virginia-based Mars. The combined company will have the Mars name, but Wrigley’s brand and top management are expected to remain in place.

William Wrigley Jr., the company’s chairman, told shareholders that the benefits of the deal “have become even more striking” given what has happened in financial markets since late April, when Mars’ offer was unveiled.

Wrigley shareholders will receive $80 per share, a 28 percent premium over where the stock was trading before the deal was announced. Meanwhile, the Standard & Poor’s 500 has fallen 13 percent in that time.

Wrigley, great-grandson of the man who founded the gum giant in the 1890s, said he expects the deal will close around Oct. 6.

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.

Wrigley Doublemint Edit 2008, originally uploaded by JWSherman.

 An editorial in last week’s The Reflector (which is the online student newspaper of Mississippi State University) weighed in on something AndrewsGumWorld has mused on before, and that’s Chris Brown’s song (and then commercial) “Forever,” which was first a hit song, and then revealed to be a song (among a few others) commissioned by Wrigley to further its brands via music by popular artists.

The editorial was written by Robert Scribner, a graduate student at that university, and while he likes the song and Doublemint gum, he’s a bit bothered by the intersection of the worlds of chewing gum advertising and music, and makes this interesting point near the end of his editorial, “Ad placements deceive customers”:

But is it really necessary to plant slogans subliminally into popular music? I have a degree in marketing, and even I wouldn’t stoop that low. It’s just not what music is all about, and it’s not what chewing gum is all about either. Both of these fine industries should be above deceiving their customers.

 Last week’s The Star, from South Yorkshire in the U.K., reported on the slightly delayed opening of a brand new school for students in the village of Doncaster.

The All Saints’ School in Rossington, a secondary school with recognition as a sports college, hosts 850 students in the five-years-in-the-planning £23 million (US$42 million) new building, which features new laboratories and an IT suite to go with last year’s record exam scores and this year’s new approaches, including new school uniforms for the students.

As the article notes, headteacher David Roswell has hopes that students will treat the new school well:

Mr Rowsell also showed his students photos of the old school to get across the message that he wants them to look after their new home.

“Some of the pictures showed chewing gum on furniture and I pointed out we’re not going back to those days. Chewing gum has been banned and we have only one designated dining area.

Last week, CNNMoney.com (in between its reports on one of the worst weeks ever for the US economy) noted that Wrigley’s Extra gum would be part of the third season of the popular NBC show “The Biggest Loser,” for both the contestants on the show and viewers, who can take part in a sweepstakes that will connect winners with Biggest Loser trainer Bob Harper (well, you can, of course, read what it says above).

Here’s how the article, “Extra(R) Gum Returns for Another Season on NBC’s “Biggest Loser”: Offers Audiences a Chance to Attend Season Finale Live and Meet Trainer Bob Harper” reports on how Extra gum plays a role in the contestants’ training regimen on the show:

“Maintaining the proper weight management routine can be a daunting task because it is tough to stick with healthy diet choices, a consistent workout routine and the will power to avoid unhealthy snacking,” said Bob Harper. “Small, daily steps like chewing a piece of Extra sugar-free gum to curb sweet cravings can have a tremendous impact on a healthy lifestyle. ‘Stick it to Snack Cravings’ sweepstakes winners who visit our set for the finale will witness first-hand the emotional impact of this transformation.”

This will be the third season in which the show’s trainers have recommended their contestants chew Extra gum when they crave sweets rather than indulging in higher calorie options. The trainers’ advice supports what research has shown, that chewing gum before snacking may help reduce cravings for sweets. Another evident benefit to chewing Extra gum is that it contains only five calories a piece. And, according to researchers, the sheer act of chewing gum can burn approximately 11 calories per hour.

 Ramadan is the ninth month of the Muslim calendar and is a time of fasting for nearly a billion Muslims worldwide.

In Iran, unfortunately, it is also a time for arrests if that fast is broken, as last week’s Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran reported:

Three boys were arrested by the State Security Forces (SSF) – mullahs‘ suppressive police –for chewing gum in Mardom Park in the western city of Hamadan.

The three were detained on the charges of “eating in public” in the month of Ramadan. The boys were not old enough even by the mullahs’ own laws for refraining from eating in public. Mullahs’ penal code set the legal age for boys at 15 and for girls nine.

 A story in today’s Syracuse newspaper, The Post-Standard, talks about an upcoming presentation for local business people that will be made by former Yankees‘ pitcher Jim Bouton (perhaps best known for his autobiography  “Ball Four”).

The story describes Bouton’s various attempts at business ideas, ranging from his first lemonade stand at age 8, to stints in the scrap business, paper delivery and baby sitting.

At age 39, he attempted a comeback to baseball in 1977, and he had an idea for an alternative to chewing tobacco that was making some of his fellow players sick. Here’s how he described how the idea emerged (and then the invention process that grew out of his idea):

“I was playing in Portland, Oregon, Class A,” (Bouton) recalled. “I was sitting in the bullpen one night. The guys are all chewing tobacco, getting sick. This kid sitting next to me, left-handed pitcher by the name of Rob Nelson, says, ‘Too bad there isn’t something that looks like tobacco but tastes good like gum.’ I said, hey, that’s a great idea shredded gum in a pouch.”

A couple of months later, Bouton still had the idea in his head. So he called Nelson and suggested they go into business together and bring the idea to a bubble gum company. They’d call it Big League Chew.

They sliced up bubble gum with scissors and designed a pouch similar to the kind that chewing tobacco comes in. Then came the tough part finding a bubble gum company to make it.

“We went to Topps, Fleer, Life Savers, Leaf, American Chicle,” he said. “They all looked at it and they all said the same thing. ‘This is interesting, Bouton, but we don’t make anything like this.’ I said, ‘Precisely.’ So I learned how tough it is to be an entrepreneur businessman.” Bouton’s persistence paid off, though. It took two years, but he finally found a gum company Amurol Products, a small novelty gum company in Illinois willing to sell it.

Amurol introduced Big League Chew in 1980 and, in the first year selling it, doubled its annual revenues to $18 million.

 The Basingstoke Gazette reported on Test Valley Borough Council’s efforts in Andover to cut the number of people spitting out their gum where it doesn’t belong, part of Britain’s and the Chewing Gum Action Group’s nation-wide efforts to reduce discarded gum on the pavements of the cities, towns and villages of that country.

To highlight the need in Andover (which last year spent 15 days and £13,500 [US$24,000+] removing gum from its streets), the Council set up a “grime scene” to make its point.

Here’s how it worked:

On Monday two demonstrations aimed at showing people the effect of gum being left on pavements were set up in Andover High Street.

A grime scene’ - where each piece of gum was marked with a ticket - aimed at showing people that dropping it was a fineable offence; while each blob of gum in an area of pavement near the Guildhall was highlighted and circled with chalk.

 Today’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports on the purchase of GumBuster equipment by local businesses, and the transformation that’s come with that $9,000 investment (that’s Clean Sweep ambassador Mike Mitchell gum busting above).

Part of the article, “Sidewalk steamer renders gum gone,” (and it’s nice, it should be noted, to see alliteration instead of the usual gum pun) talks about the wonders (and biodegradable cleaning ingredients) of the process:

Powered by a portable generator, the GumBuster mixes steam and biodegradable detergent to erase these bottlecap-size blotches that long ago lost their flavor and were expectorated onto the sidewalk. It may be a myth that swallowed gum lasts seven years in your stomach, but it’s mighty resilient on concrete.

Like Bazooka Joe, Mitchell wields a 3-foot-long wand with a brush on the business end to zap each spot. It’s like they disappear, he said, sometimes emitting one last whiff of mint or cinnamon as their last gasp.

You’d swear most of these gum blobs are actually tar because they’re so dirty black. But hit ’em with a blast of 260 degrees and they return to their original color before bubbling into nothingness.

 William Bothwell’s (that’s him above) “Angles ’n’ Attitudes” in Ontario’s Orangeville Citizen newspaper recently took on the subject of chewing gum in a column titled “A sticky business” (AndrewsGumWorld has noted before that puns run rampant in gum reporting in the media).

Bothwell is, perhaps, arguably a gum curmudgeon, as the opening lines of his editorial below will note, but he also managed to fit, in one column, details on everything from new antioxidant-laden Bonus gum (reported on earlier here), the Alamo, Mexican General Santa Ana’s banishment to Staten Island, gum flavors, Thomas Adams and his role in the invention of gum, the introduction of pepsin powders to gum and the creation of “dentyne” gum, the Greeks, Socrates and more. The entire piece is, truly, an education in the history (past and current) of chewing gum. Check it out, including these opening lines:

 This writer has eschewed chewing gum for longer than he can remember. It is an abstinence to which he intends to stick. One remembers how, coming in from recess at school, it was not unknown to stick a wad of gum under the desk to await future use. Sometimes it remained there until summer holidays came. By then its ‘best-before’ date was long past and the custodians had extra work to do.

All of our teachers thought that if we concentrated on the assigned work we would have neither thought nor need for gum. None of us was as yet able to argue that chewing something other than the tip of a pencil might aid concentration, reduce the stress of the teacherpupil relationship and facilitate the learning process. Anyway, nobody that I can remember was ready in Runnymede Public School to argue with Miss Scott or Mr Hambly. They, by the way, eventually married and, one assumes, had their own tensions to contend with.