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

Wrigley Building in Fog, originally uploaded by spudart.

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.

While AndrewsGumWorld doesn’t often hear from the people we write about, we got a nice note yesterday from our friends at GumClear, who were featured in a post we wrote just over a month ago regarding their efforts in Kirkintilloch in Scotland to tackle the significant problem of disposed gum. Here’s what the note said:

Just spotted this article about the Kirkintilloch project we were involved with - it went very well.

We use an environmentally friendly removal technique that minimises the amount of water used and disruption to the locality. We also make sure our work is highly visible, hopefully helping to change people’s habits so the dispose of their gum responsibly.

As you may have read elsewhere in AndrewsGumWorld, we fully not only responsible gum use (as a reminder: in the mouth or in the garbage bin), but also the great work that companies like GumClear does to find environmentally friendly solutions to the problem of disposed gum. You can read more about their work on their informative site (including some great insights about the scope of this challenge), but here are some more details about why their approach is, indeed, environmentally friendly:

Problems with High Pressure Power Washing
Traditional high pressure power washing uses around 8 litres of water per minute, which can quickly flood an area and cause damage by dislodging the grout and sand in paving joints.

Power washing also tends to merely move the chewing gum to another area where it reforms and sticks to the surface again.

Specialist Gum Removal Equipment
The equipment used by Gum Clear has been specifically designed to remove gum from external surfaces and uses only 2 litres of water per hour, minimising the environmental impact of the cleaning process.

“creer o reventar”. Y por desconfiado, murió el chicle globo.,
originally uploaded by quino para los amigos.

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.

GJ5A0392, originally uploaded by redsun81.

chewing gum tree, originally uploaded by me, i am zoe.