Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company

views updated May 17 2018

Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company

410 North Michigan Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60611
U.S.A.
Telephone: (312) 644-2121
Fax: (312) 644-0097
Web site: http://www.wrigley.com

Public Company
Incorporated: 1919
Employees: 11,250
Sales: $2.7 billion (2002)
Stock Exchanges: New York
Ticker Symbol: WWY
NAIC: 31134 Nonchocolate Confectionery Manufacturing

With over 110 years of success under its belt, Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company operates as the largest chewing gum manufacturer in the world, supplying nearly half of all chewing gum sold in the United States. The firm is a market leader in Europe as well, securing almost 50 percent of the continent’s gum profits. Wrigley dominates the gum industry with well known brands, including Juicy Fruit, Doublemint, Big Red, and Wrigley’s Spearmint gum. Other brands sold worldwide include Airwaves, Alpine, Eclipse, Extra, Freedent, Hubba Bubba, Orbit, P.K., and Winterfresh. Subsidiary Amurol Confections Company also manufacturers chewing gum and confectionary products for adults and youths under such names as Big League Chew, Bubble Tape, Hubba Bubba Sweet Roll, Squeeze Pop, and Velamints. Fourth generation William Wrigley Jr. heads up the company as president and CEO.

Working in the Soap Business in the Late 1800s

William Wrigley Jr. (who never used a comma in his name) began his career in business as a mischievous teenager in Philadelphia during the 1870s. After running away from home at the age of 11 and suffering through repeated expulsions from school, the young Wrigley reportedly was told by his father after a pie throwing incident, “Your school life hasn’t been a success. Let’s see how work strikes you.”

The elder Wrigley put his son to work in his soap factory, giving him the job of stirring the soap vats with a large paddle. Working ten hours a day, the boy was paid only $1.50 per week. After serving a year as a soap stirrer, Wrigley won a promotion to the sales staff. Still in his teens, the junior Wrigley drove a horse-drawn wagon loaded with soap through the crowded metropolises of the northeastern United States. Peddling soap, Wrigley soon learned the importance of gentle persuasion. He learned to make friends through kind, deferential conversation, and, in the process, move tons of soap.

In 1891, at the age of 29, Wrigley moved to Chicago to establish a western agency for his father’s soap business. The product, however, was shunned by local merchants who complained that, priced at only five cents per box, the soap provided them with almost no profit margin. Wrigley convinced his father to double the retail price of the soap and induce sales through premiums. Wrigley purchased 65,000 cheap red umbrellas to give away with soap purchases. While the dye in the umbrellas ran when it rained, the devices succeeded in selling a lot of soap. In addition, while the concept required some fine tuning, the experience confirmed to Wrigley that premiums were a good idea and an effective sales aid. “Everybody likes something extra, for nothing,” he once said.

At this point, Wrigley decided to strike out on his own as an independent soap wholesaler. He chose to give away baking powder as a premium and, oddly, promoted soap sales with a cookbook. Before long, demand for the baking powder outstripped demand for the soap. In 1892, Wrigley abandoned the soap business altogether to concentrate on selling baking powder. However, tiring of the business, he chose not to offer soap as the premium for baking powder. Instead, he began to search for a new premium. Wrigley probably first saw chewing gum as a young soap peddler. Long in existence, gum extracted from spruce bark had been used by Native Americans as a relaxing and habit-forming pastime.

Gum in the 1890s was still extracted from spruce gum and from paraffin, a tasteless and odorless waxy petroleum product that refused to be chewed down. These primitive gums could hold flavoring agents, such as licorice extracts, but became tasteless globs after only a few minutes of energetic chewing. At the time, only about a dozen gum companies existed. After conducting some research, Wrigley suggested to his supplier, Zeno Manufacturing, that it try making gum with chicle, a coagulated latex extract from tropical sapodilla trees. Until this time, chicle was used primarily in the manufacture of rubber.

Wrigley’s Spearmint and Juicy Fruit Make Their Debut: 1893

As with the soap before it, demand for the new chicle-based “chewing candy” outstripped demand for the baking powder. In 1909, Wrigley bought out Zeno and merged the two companies into the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company. The new company introduced two new brands to the market. The Vassar brand was targeted to women, while Lotta Gum was intended for the general market. In 1893, the company rolled out Wrigley’s Spearmint, a cool, minty gum that freshened the breath, and later that year introduced a sweeter, fruit-flavored gum called Juicy Fruit.

Juicy Fruit, first packaged in a pale grey wrapper with red lettering (the distinctive yellow package did not appear until after World War II), stood out from other brands, and the fruit extracts used in Juicy Fruit held their flavor in the chicle gum. Wrigley’s Spearmint, meanwhile, was wrapped in a solid white package. Both brands, wrapped five sticks to a package, featured a design that clearly identified the gums as a Wrigley product. Wrigley’s Spearmint and Juicy Fruit proved so popular that Wrigley soon found no reason to continue manufacturing Vassar or Lotta Gum.

In 1899, Wrigley was invited to join six other chewing gum manufacturers who were banding together to form a trust. He refused, and soon found himself engaged in a nearly ruinous competition with them. As he himself was once a wholesaler, Wrigley understood the importance of supporting his retailers. Convinced that he could extend the application of premiums to dealers, Wrigley gave them free coffee grinders, cash registers, scales, lamps, and other appliances. Having won their respect, if not their allegiance, Wrigley found it that much easier to foist Wrigley display cases upon retailers. Nevertheless, despite his best efforts, sales remained flat. He gambled on two expensive, but ineffective, advertising campaigns—each costing in excess of $100,000—and when even these had no effect, he was left broke.

Advertising Begins in 1907

The financial panic of 1907, a drawn-out recessionary crisis that largely evaporated the demand for advertising, presented Wrigley with another opportunity to gamble. Still broke but finding advertising rates deeply discounted, Wrigley borrowed $250,000 and in three days purchased advertising space that would otherwise have cost him $1.5 million. This scale of advertising, he reasoned, would cause a reaction among consumers.

Striking quickly, with his competitors still shy from the recession, Wrigley timed his advertising campaign to run concurrent with a new dealer promotion. He sent retailers coupons for free boxes of Wrigley’s Spearmint, redeemable from Wrigley distributors. When the dealers redeemed their coupons, they made themselves known to the distributors, who assembled a valuable list of retailers and methodically built relationships with them. Wrigley implored his salesmen always to be pleasant, patient, and on time.

In advertising, his now famous credo was, “Tell ’em quick and tell ’em often.” The simple messages of his campaign, and the complex strategy behind it, were highly successful. In a matter of weeks, Wrigley had grown its market from the Midwest to the entire nation. By 1910, as sales increased from $170,000 to more than $3 million, Wrigley’s Spearmint became the largest-selling brand in the nation.

Looking for additional markets, Wrigley turned its attention to English-speaking foreign countries. In Great Britain, however, the practice of chewing gum was held in low esteem. In fact, it was viewed as a habit every bit as distasteful as chewing tobacco. After failing to find a profitable market in Great Britain, the company next turned to British dominions and established factories in Canada in 1910 and in Australia in 1915.

Wrigley maintained a few other minor brands of chewing gum, including Sweet 16, Licorice, Pepsin, Blood Orange, Pineapple, Banana, and Lemon Cream. However, lacking the marketing muscle and, consequently, the popularity of the flagship brands, these flavors were gradually phased out. In 1914, fearing stagnation in the product line, Wrigley added a new peppermint flavor, Doublemint. Wrapped in a bold green package—but with a two headed arrow logo—the new brand has been touted as “double strength,” “double good,” and “double distilled.”

Company Perspectives

In our pursuit of generational growth and prosperity for our stakeholders, the entire Wrigley organization is committed to acting in a manner consistent with the shared values we hold paramount. We treat each other with trust, dignity, and respect; we create an environment where people from diverse cultures and backgrounds work together effectively; we support and have the courage to take measured risk; we act with a sense of urgency without sacrificing excellence; we foster a spirit of innovation in all areas of our business; and we strive for effective communication that results in teamwork, shared knowledge, and ideas.

To keep the Wrigley name in the public consciousness, Wrigley bought huge public billboards, upon which he plastered his simple advertising messages: “Doublemint, Double Good” and “Chew Juicy Fruit.” After 1930, Doublemint was promoted consistently with twins, double images, and even a double-talking radio comedian. Wrigley sponsored the Lone Wolf radio show and created a fictitious Indian tribe in which more than 100,000 children were signed up as members. In one spectacular stunt, which possibly marked the birth of direct marketing, Wrigley mailed a complimentary four-stick package of gum to every household in the United States that owned a telephone. People with telephones, he reasoned, could afford gum. These activities helped to sustain Wrigley’s gum as established national brands. They also made Wrigley very rich, particularly after he took his company public in 1919.

With his profits, Wrigley purchased a share in the Chicago Cubs baseball team in 1916 and, after buying out his partners’ interests in the team, collected the talent needed to win the pennant in 1929. Before his death in 1932, and with astounding foresight, he purchased Catalina Island near Los Angeles and developed it into a major tourist attraction. These endeavors helped to keep the Wrigley family in good financial health through the difficult years of the Great Depression.

As the economy slowly recovered from the hardships of the crisis, Wrigley maintained its strong position in the market under the leadership of Wrigley’s only son, Philip K. Wrigley. The company made headway into the British market, establishing a factory there in 1927 and introducing a pellet-shaped brand of gum. Called P.K, the brand was named for the company’s slogan, “Packed tight, Kept right,” not for Philip Wrigley’s initials as many had claimed.

Survival during the War Effort

The company entered a potentially disastrous era as the United States escalated its involvement in the war in Europe. After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, the company found shipping unavailable and quality ingredients in increasingly short supply. Production of Wrigley’s three famous brands had to be severely scaled back, and all of the gum that could be manufactured was sent to the armed forces, whose use of the gum reportedly helped to relax and revitalize them.

Left only with inferior ingredients, the company in 1944 introduced a temporary brand called Orbit. Admitting that the brand was not up to its standards, Wrigley was secure in the knowledge that Orbit would disappear when the company could again sell its premium brands. To avoid confusion or consumer dissatisfaction, Wrigley gave the new gum an entirely different package design that did not include the trademark arrow.

Soon, however, Wrigley found it impossible to produce its premium brands even for the military. For the remainder of the war, the company produced only Orbit but continued to advertise its regular brands. In billboard and print advertisements, the company featured an empty Wrigley’s Spearmint wrapper with the caption, “Remember this wrapper!” The campaign was so successful that when the war ended and the brands were reintro-duced (and production of Orbit ceased), pent up demand caused consumption of Wrigley’s Spearmint, Doublemint, and Juicy Fruit to exceed prewar levels.

Dedicated to maintaining the value of the company’s brands to consumers, Wrigley insisted that the price of the product be held at five cents per package. This was in keeping with William Wrigley’s business credo that restraint in regard to immediate profits was not only the company’s most profitable policy but probably the company’s only profitable policy.

By holding the line against price increases, Wrigley built strong dealer confidence in his brands and held his raw materials suppliers to more stable terms. However, this was only possible because the company dominated the market for chewing gum and was able to incorporate newer, more efficient production and distribution methods. In time, Wrigley’s competitors were forced to raised the price of their products. This won the company even greater loyalty from retailers and convinced many consumers to abandon their brands for Wrigley.

Overcoming Image and Pricing Obstacles: 1960s–1970s

In 1962, dissatisfied with low sales in Britain, Wrigley launched an educational advertising campaign aimed at ending the social prejudice against gum chewing. In an effort to illustrate circumstances in which gum chewing was not socially unacceptable, the company ran a series of advertisements over the tagline, “Certainly not!” The advertisements featured barristers, businessmen, and students in scenarios where gum chewing might offend others. The advertisements were taken so seriously by the British public that many wrote to the company demanding to know when and where they could chew gum. The campaign was altered to depict acceptable circumstances for using the product, and sales began to climb.

In 1971, after charging only five cents for his product for more than 50 years, Wrigley was no longer able to extract greater efficiency from its operation. Philip Wrigley was painfully aware of price sensitivity. His father often told his managers, “We are a five-cent business, and no one in this company can afford to forget it.” With great consternation but no alternatives, the company raised the price of its five-stick packages from five to seven cents. Inflationary pressures brought on by the oil crisis in the early 1970s inevitably forced the company to institute additional price increases in the years that followed.

By 1974, these increases eroded the price advantage Wrigley brands held over competitors. Upstarts such as sugar-free Trident and cinnamon-flavored Dentyne began to win market share from Wrigley brands. To meet this competition, Wrigley introduced Freedent, which had the admirable quality of not sticking to dental work. In 1976, the company rolled out Big Red, a cinnamon gum slightly hotter and in a larger stick than Dentyne. Both new brands, the first in years, came in Wrigley-style packages.

Key Dates

1891:: William Wrigley Jr. moves to Chicago to establish a western agency for his father’s soap business.
1893:: Wrigley’s Spearmint and Juicy Fruit gum are launched.
1910:: International expansion begins in Canada.
1914:: Wrigley’s Doublemint gum makes its debut.
1944:: The company introduces a temporary brand called Orbit during the war effort.
1975:: Freedent is launched.
1976:: Big Red enters the market.
1984:: Extra sugar-free chewing gum is added to the firm’s product arsenal.
1994:: The Winterfresh brand is introduced.
1999:: William Wrigley Jr. becomes the fourth generation to head the company.

In an attempt to stave off Trident and other popular sugar-free gums, Wrigley introduced its own sugar-free brand in 1977, giving it the World War II-era name Orbit. However, after xylitol, the artificial sweetener used in Orbit, was declared carcinogenic, sales of Orbit plummeted and the brand was withdrawn. Also in 1977, Philip Wrigley died. His son, William Wrigley, assumed leadership of the company after having served as president since 1961.

Under the new Wrigley leadership, the company began an effort to win greater market share among teen and adolescent age groups and introduced Hubba Bubba in 1979. This gum, which boasted zeppelin-sized bubbles, encountered strong competition from Bubblicious and Bubble Yum, whose manufacturers outspent Wrigley on promotion. Amidst declining sales, Hubba Bubba was transferred to Amurol, a subsidiary of the Wrigley Company. In the 1980s, Wrigley again found success with new products; the company re-entered the battle for sugar-free gum chewers in 1984 when it introduced Extra, a brand sweetened with aspartame that soon gave birth to its own extensions. Over a period of years, Extra became available in a half dozen flavors.

Successful Advertising: 1980s to the Early 1990s

During the 1980s, Wrigley returned to heavy television promotion of its brands using the single, simple slogan, “Pure chewing satisfaction.” The message remained true to William Wrigley’s “Tell ’em quick, tell ’em often” advice and gave Wrigley a wholesome, super sweet image. This conservative approach was consistent with Wrigley’s reputation for quality and purity. Still sensitive to the social stigma of chewing gum in public, the company did not portray people chewing gum in its advertisements until the 1980s, and for that it used a pair of attractive, young female twins.

The company’s advertising agency, BBDO Chicago (located, incidentally, in the Wrigley Building), scored a relative coup with a new campaign launched in 1990. In a series of spots, Wrigley’s Spearmint was positioned as an alternative to smoking in instances where smoking is not permitted. Using words such as “House Guest,” “Office Policy,” and “Frequent Flyer”—with the letters O and Q substituted with a red slashed circle over a cigarette—a voice-over explains, “When I can’t smoke, I enjoy pure chewing satisfaction.” The Wrigley advertisement broke new ground for addressing the sticky social question of smokers’ and non-smokers’ rights. While steering clear of judging the virtues of smoking, the advertisements suggested new ways people could use the company’s product to solve a difficult situation.

While Wrigley brands tended to carry a more staid image, the company maintained the strongest reputation in the market for quality and specialty. After more than 100 years in business, the company—under the stewardship of the third William Wrigley through much of the 1990s—made no attempt to diversify into different product lines. While Wrigley’s Amurol subsidiary produced novelty and specialty confectionery products such as suckers and roll candy, the company refused to venture into the food, consumer products, or chemical industries, where its major competitors at the time, RJR Nabisco and Warner-Lambert, were most heavily concentrated.

Changing Direction: 1990s and Beyond

Eyeing international expansion as crucial to business growth, Wrigley spent much of the 1990s focused on moving into lucrative Asian and European markets. In 1992, the company opened a Chinese manufacturing facility in Guangzhou. During that year, international sales grew at a faster pace than the company’s domestic sales and accounted for 45 percent of overall revenues. By 1993, construction plans were underway for plants in Bangalore, India, and in Poznan, Poland. The firm also began to expand and upgrade its existing facilities in England and France.

Wrigley’s international efforts proved to be a success. In 1994, international sales outpaced that of domestic sales, accounting for over half of the company’s overall revenues for the first time in its history. Domestic sales began to drop off, however, a sure sign that Wrigley’s product line needed some new attention. As such, Winterfresh mint chewing gum was launched in 1994 in an attempt to jumpstart sluggish financial results. Expansion efforts continued to remain at the forefront of the company’s strategy, and despite lackluster domestic results Wrigley forged ahead in international markets. In 1996, the firm began construction on a new plant in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Fourth generation William Wrigley Jr. took over the helm at Wrigley in 1999 after the sudden death of his father in March. By this time, international sales were slowing, the firm’s stellar earnings pace had fallen off, and Wrigley’s U.S. sales were unremarkable. The new leader immediately pumped new blood into the conservative firm, hiring executives from outside firms and planning for expansion—this time through new product development and acquisition. In a January 2001 Forbes interview, Wrigley Jr. commented on his place in the company claiming, “I see my role as taking a late-19th-century company and bringing it into the 21st century with guns blazing.”

Indeed, during the early years of the new century, the CEO made several significant moves. The firm created a healthcare division that launched such new products as Surpass, an antacid chewing gum. This new product did not meet company expectations, however, and was taken off the market in 2003. Wrigley’s other endeavors proved to be better suited for the firm. During 2001, the Velamints breath mints business was acquired from Chicago-based Ragold Inc. The firm bolstered its product line in 2002 with the launch of Eclipse Flash strips, dissolvable films that promoted fresh breath, and Orbit Drops, a brand of sugar-free lozenges. It also began a marketing campaign aimed at sprucing up its mainstay brands.

Wrigley’s signaled its commitment to growth through acquisition in 2002 when it made a surprising $12.5 billion play for Hershey Foods Corporation. The deal never reached fruition and left the firm looking for future deals. During 2003, the company was focused on six strategic goals: boosting its core business, expanding into new geographic and distribution areas, domestic diversification, product innovation, delivering high quality at a low cost, and developing a successful workforce.

Wrigley’s desire for major expansion left some industry observers questioning its strategy. On one hand, an acquisition could catapult the firm into the upper echelon of the foods and candy industry. On the other hand, it could spell disaster for a traditionally conservative, family-run firm. Regardless of the company’s future direction, one thing was certain—gum chewers would no doubt continue to purchase Juicy Fruit, Double-mint, Big Red, and Wrigley’s Spearmint gum for years to come.

Principal Subsidiaries

Wrigley Manufacturing Company LLC; Amurol Confections Company; Four-Ten Corporation; Wrigley Sales Company; L.A. Dreyfus Company; Northwestern Flavors LLC.

Principal Competitors

Groupo Bimbo S.A.; Pfizer Inc.; The Topps Company Inc.

WM. Wrigley Jr. Company

views updated May 18 2018

WM. Wrigley Jr. Company

410 North Michigan Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60611
U.S.A.
(312) 644-2121
Fax: (312) 644-7879

Public Company
Incorporated: 1919
Employees: 6,400
Sales: $1.29 billion
Stock Exchanges: New York
SICs: 2067 Chewing Gum

The Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company controls almost half the market for chewing gum in the United States. For nearly 90 years the company has maintained a narrow brand line, consisting mainly of Wrigley’s Spearmint, Juicy Fruit, and Doublemint gum, promoting these brands with extremely wholesome images. In recent years the company has introduced a wider variety of flavors, but has resisted the urge to diversify into products other than chewing gum. As a result, to many, the name Wrigley means chewing gum.

William Wrigley Jr. (who never used a comma in his name) began his career in business as a mischievous teenager in Philadelphia during the 1870s. After running away from home at the age of 11 and suffering through repeated expulsions from school, the young Wrigley reportedly was told by his father after a pie throwing incident, “Your school life hasn’t been a success. Let’s see how work strikes you.”

The elder Wrigley relegated his son to work in his soap factory, giving him the job of stirring the soap vats with a large paddle. Working ten hours a day, the boy was paid only $1.50 per week. After serving a year as a soap stirrer, Wrigley won a promotion to the sales staff. Still in his teens, the junior Wrigley drove a horse-drawn wagon loaded with soap through the crowded metropolises of the northeastern United States. Peddling soap, Wrigley soon learned the importance of gentle persuasion. He learned to make friends through kind, deferential conversation and, in the process, move tons of soap.

In 1891, at the age of 29, Wrigley moved to Chicago to establish a western agency for his father’s soap business. The product, however, was shunned by local merchants who complained that, priced at only five cents per box, the soap provided them with almost no profit margin. Wrigley convinced his father to double the retail price of the soap and induce sales through premiums. Wrigley purchased 65,000 cheap red umbrellas to give away with soap purchases. While the dye in the umbrellas ran when it rained, the devices succeeded in selling a lot of soap. And, while the concept required some fine tuning, the experience confirmed to Wrigley that premiums were a good idea and an effective sales aid. “Everybody likes something extra, for nothing,” he once said.

At this point Wrigley decided to strike out on his own as an independent soap wholesaler. He chose to give away baking powder as a premium and, oddly, promoted soap sales with a cookbook. Before long, demand for the baking powder outstripped demand for the soap. In 1892 Wrigley abandoned the soap business altogether to concentrate on selling baking powder. But, tiring of the business, he chose not to offer soap as the premium for baking powder. Instead, he began to search for a new premium. Wrigley probably first saw chewing gum as a young soap peddler. Long in existence, gum extracted from spruce bark had been used by Native Americans as a relaxing and habit-forming pastime.

Gum in the 1890s was still extracted from spruce gum and from paraffin, a tasteless and odorless waxy petroleum product that refused to be chewed down. These primitive gums could hold flavoring agents, such as licorice extracts, but became tasteless globs after only a few minutes of energetic chewing. At the time, only .about a dozen gum companies existed. After conducting some research, Wrigley suggested to his supplier, Zeno Manufacturing, that it try making gum with chicle, a coagulated latex extract from tropical sapodilla trees. Until this time, chicle was used primarily in the manufacture of rubber.

As with the soap before it, demand for the new chicle-based “chewing candy” outstripped demand for the baking powder. In 1909 Wrigley bought out Zeno and merged the two companies into the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company. The new company introduced two new brands to the market. The brand Vassar was targeted to women, while Lotta Gum was intended for the general market. In 1893 the company rolled out Wrigley’s Spearmint, a cool minty gum that freshened the breath, and later that year introduced a sweeter fruit flavored gum called Juicy Fruit.

Juicy Fruit, first packaged in a pale grey wrapper with red lettering (the distinctive yellow package did not appear until after World War II), stood out from other brands, and the fruit extracts used in Juicy Fruit held their flavor in the chicle gum. Wrigley’s Spearmint, meanwhile, was wrapped in a solid white package. Both brands, wrapped five sticks to a package, featured a design that clearly identified the gums as a Wrigley product. And both brands proved so popular that Wrigley soon found no reason to continue manufacturing Vassar or Lotta Gum.

In 1899 Wrigley was invited to join six other chewing gum manufacturers who were banding together to form a trust. He refused, and soon found himself engaged in a nearly ruinous competition with them. As he himself was once a wholesaler, Wrigley understood the importance of supporting his retailers.

Convinced that he could extend the application of premiums to dealers, Wrigley gave them free coffee grinders, cash registers, scales, lamps and other appliances. Having won their respect, if not their allegiance, Wrigley found it that much easier to foist Wrigley display cases upon retailers. But, despite his best efforts, sales remained flat. He gambled on two expensive, but ineffective, advertising campaigns—each costing in excess of $100,000—and when even these had no effect, he was left broke.

The financial panic of 1907, a drawn-out recessionary crisis that largely evaporated the demand for advertising, presented Wrigley with another opportunity to gamble. Still broke but finding advertising rates deeply discounted, Wrigley borrowed $250,000 and in three days purchased advertising space that would otherwise have cost him $1.5 million. This scale of advertising, he reasoned, would cause a reaction among consumers.

Striking quickly, with his competitors still shy from the recession, Wrigley timed his advertising campaign to run concurrent with a new dealer promotion. He sent retailers coupons for free boxes of Wrigley’s Spearmint, redeemable from Wrigley distributors. When the dealers redeemed their coupons, they made themselves known to the distributors, who assembled a valuable list of retailers and methodically built relationships with them. Wrigley implored his salesmen always to be pleasant, patient, and on time, and never to argue.

In advertising, his now famous credo was, “Tell ‘em quick and tell ‘em often.” The simple messages of his campaign, and the complex strategy behind it, were highly successful. In a matter of weeks Wrigley had grown its market from the Midwest to the entire nation. By 1910, as sales increased from $170,000 to more than $3 million, Wrigley’s Spearmint became the largest-selling brand in the nation.

Looking for additional markets, Wrigley turned its attention to other English-speaking foreign markets. In Great Britain, however, the practice of chewing gum was held in low esteem. In fact, it was viewed as a guttural habit every bit as distasteful as chewing tobacco. Instead, the company turned to other British dominions and established factories in Canada in 1910 and in Australia in 1915.

Wrigley maintained a few other minor brands of chewing gum, including Sweet 16, Licorice, Pepsin, Blood Orange, Pineapple, Banana, and Lemon Cream. But lacking the marketing muscle and, consequently, the popularity of the flagship brands, these flavors gradually were phased out. In 1914, fearing stagnation in the product line, Wrigley added a new peppermint flavor, Doublemint. Wrapped in a bold green package—but with a two headed arrow logo—the new brand has been touted as “double strength,” “double good,” and “double distilled.”

To keep the Wrigley name in the public consciousness, Wrigley bought huge public billboards, upon which he plastered his simple advertising messages: “Doublemint, Double Good” and “Chew Juicy Fruit.” After 1930 Doublemint was promoted consistently with twins, double images, and even a double-talking radio comedian. Wrigley sponsored the Lone Wolf radio show, and created a fictitious Indian tribe in which more than 100,000 children were members. And in one spectacular stunt, and possibly the birth of direct marketing, Wrigley mailed a complimentary four-stick package of gum to every household in the United States with a telephone. People with telephones, he reasoned, could afford gum. These activities helped to sustain Wrigley’s gum as established national brands. They also made him very rich, particularly after taking the company public in 1919.

With his profits, Wrigley purchased a share in the Chicago Cubs baseball team in 1916 and, after buying out his partners’ interests in the team, collected the talent needed to win the pennant in 1929. Before his death in 1932, and with astounding foresight, he purchased Catalina Island near Los Angeles and developed it into a major tourist attraction. These endeavors helped to keep the Wrigley family in good financial health through the difficult years of the Great Depression.

As the economy slowly recovered from the hardships of the crisis, Wrigley maintained its strong position in the market under the leadership of Wrigley’s only son, Philip K. Wrigley. The company made headway into the British market, establishing a factory there in 1927 and introducing a pellet-shaped brand of gum. Called P.K, the brand was named for the company’s slogan, “Packed tight, Kept right,” not for Philip Wrigley’s initials as many had claimed.

The company, however, entered a potentially disastrous era as the United States escalated its involvement in the war in Europe. After the Japanese bombing on Pearl Harbor, the company found shipping unavailable and quality ingredients in increasingly short supply. Production of all three brands of gum had to be severely scaled back, and then all that could be manufactured was sent to the armed forces, whose use of the gum reportedly helped to relax and revitalize them.

Left only with inferior ingredients, the company in 1944 introduced a temporary brand called Orbit. Admitting that the brand was not up to its standards, Wrigley was secure in the knowledge that Orbit would disappear when the company could again sell its premium brands. To avoid confusion or consumer dissatisfaction, Wrigley gave the new gum an entirely different package design that did not include the trademark arrow.

Soon, however, Wrigley found it impossible to produce its premium brands even for the military. For the remainder of the war, the company produced only Orbit, but continued to advertise its regular brands. In billboard and print advertisements, the company featured an empty Wrigley’s Spearmint wrapper with the caption, “Remember this wrapper!” The campaign was so successful that when the war ended and the brands were reintroduced (and production of Orbit ceased), pent up demand caused consumption of Wrigley’s Spearmint, Doublemint, and Juicy Fruit to exceed prewar levels.

Dedicated to maintaining the value of the company’s brands to consumers, Wrigley insisted that the price of the product be held at five cents per package. This was in keeping with William Wrigley’s business credo that restraint in regard to immediate profits was not only the company’s most profitable policy but probably the company’s only profitable policy.

By holding the line against price increases, Wrigley built strong dealer confidence in his brands and held his raw materials suppliers to more stable terms. But this was only possible because the company dominated the market for chewing gum and was able to incorporate newer, more efficient production and distribution methods. In time, Wrigley’s competitors were forced to raised the price of their products. This won the company even greater loyalty from retailers and convinced many consumers to abandon their brands for Wrigley.

In 1962, dissatisfied with low sales in Britain, Wrigley launched an educational advertising campaign aimed at ending the social prejudice against gum chewing. In an effort to illustrate circumstances in which gum chewing was not socially unacceptable, the company ran a series of advertisements over the tagline, “Certainly not!” The advertisements featured barristers, businessmen, and students in scenarios where gum chewing might offend others. The advertisements were taken so seriously by the British public that many wrote to the company demanding to know when and where they could chew gum. The campaign was altered to depict acceptable circumstances for using the product, and sales began to climb.

In 1971, after charging only five cents for his product for more than 50 years, Wrigley was no longer able to extract greater efficiency from its operation. Philip Wrigley was painfully aware of price sensitivity. His father often told his managers, “We are a five-cent business, and no one in this company can afford to forget it.” And so, with great consternation but no alternatives, the company raised the price of its five-stick packages from five to seven cents. Inflationary pressures brought on by the oil crisis in the early 1970s inevitably forced the company to institute additional price increases in the years that followed.

By 1974 these price increases eroded the price advantage Wrigley brands held over competitors. Upstarts such as sugar-free Trident and cinnamon-flavored Dentyne began to win market share from Wrigley brands. To meet this competition, Wrigley introduced Freedent, which had the admirable quality of not sticking to dental work. In 1976 the company rolled out Big Red, a cinnamon gum slightly hotter and in a larger stick than Dentyne. Both new brands, the first in years, came in Wrigley-style packages.

In an attempt to stave off Trident and other popular sugar-free gums, Wrigley introduced its own sugar-free brand in 1977, giving it the World War II-era name Orbit. But after xylitol, the artificial sweetener used in Orbit, was declared carcinogenic, sales of Orbit plummeted and the brand was withdrawn. Also in 1977 Philip Wrigley died. His son, named William Wrigley, assumed leadership of the company after having served as president since 1961.

Under the new Wrigley, the company began an effort to win greater market share among teen and adolescent age groups and introduced Hubba Bubba in 1979. This gum, which boasted zeppelin-sized bubbles, encountered strong competition from Bubblicious and Bubble Yum, whose manufacturers outspent Wrigley on promotion. Amidst declining sales, Hubba Bubba was transferred to Amurol, a subsidiary of the Wrigley Company. But in the 1980s Wrigley found success with new products; the company re-entered the battle for sugar-free gum chewers in 1984 when it introduced Extra, a brand sweetened with aspartame that soon gave birth to its own extensions. Over a period of years, Extra became available in a half dozen flavors.

During the 1980s Wrigley returned to heavy television promotion of its brands using the single, simple slogan, “Pure chewing satisfaction.” The message remained true to William Wrigley’s “Tell ‘em quick, tell ‘em often” advice, and gave Wrigley a wholesome, super sweet image. This conservative approach was consistent with Wrigley’s reputation for quality and purity. Still sensitive to the social stigma of chewing gum in public, the company did not portray people chewing gum in its advertisements until the 1980s, and for that it used a pair of attractive young female Doublemint twins.

The company’s advertising agency, BBDO Chicago (located, incidentally, in the Wrigley Building), scored a relative coup with a new campaign launched in 1990. In a series of spots, Wrigley’s Spearmint was positioned as an alternative to smoking in instances where smoking is not permitted. Using words such as “House Guest,” “Office Policy” and “Frequent Flyer”—with the letters O and Q substituted with a red slashed circle over a cigarette—a voice-over explains, “When I can’t smoke, I enjoy pure chewing satisfaction.” The Wrigley advertisement broke new ground for addressing the sticky social question of smokers’ and non-smokers’ rights. While steering clear of judging the virtues of smoking, the advertisements suggested new ways people could use the company’s product to solve a difficult situation.

While Wrigley brands have tended to carry a more staid image, the company maintained the strongest reputation in the market for quality and specialty. After more than 100 years in business, the company—now under the stewardship of the third William Wrigley—has made no attempt to diversify into different product lines. While Wrigley’s Amurol subsidiary produces novelty and specialty confectionery products such as suckers and roll candy, the company has refused to venture into the food, consumer products, or chemical industries, where its major competitors, RJR Nabisco and Warner-Lambert, are most heavily concentrated.

Principal Subsidiaries

Amurol Products Company; Four-Ten Corporation; L.A. Dreyfus Company; Northwestern Flavors, Inc.; The Wrigley Company Pty., Limited (Australia); Wrigley Austria Ges.m.b.H.; Wrigley Canada Inc.; Wrigley Chewing Gum Company Ltd. (China); The Wrigley Company Limited (U.K.); Oy Wrigley Scandinavia Ab (Finland); Wrigley S.A. (France); Wrigley G.m.b.H (Germany); Wrigley N.V. (Holland); The Wrigley Company (H.K.) Limited (Hong Kong); Wrigley Hungaria Ltd. (Hungary); Wrigley & Company, Ltd., Japan; The Wrigley Company (East Africa) Limited (Kenya); The Wrigley Company (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd.; The Wrigley Company (N.Z.) Limited (New Zealand); Wrigley Scandinavia AS (Norway); The Wrigley Company (P.N.G.) Pty. Ltd. (Papua New Guinea); Wrigley Philippines, Inc.; Malayan Guttas Private Limited (Singapore); Wrigley Co., S.A. (Canary Islands); Wrigley Scandinavia AB (Sweden); Wrigley Taiwan Limited; Wrigley Ljubljana Ltd. (Slovenia); Wrigley Czechoslovakia, Ltd. (Prague, Czech Republic); Wrigley Poland, Limited (Poland).

Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company

views updated Jun 11 2018

Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company

ALTOIDS CAMPAIGN
ALTOIDS GONE SOUR CAMPAIGN
GOTTA HAVE TWISTED SWEET CAMPAIGN
NO MATTER WHAT CAMPAIGN

410 N. Michigan Ave.
Chicago, Illinois 60611
USA
Telephone: (312) 644-2121
Fax: (312) 644-0097
Web site: www.wrigley.com

ALTOIDS CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW

A British brand of breath mints dating from the eighteenth century and described as "curiously strong," Altoids was purchased in 1993 by Kraft Foods, Inc. Having discovered that Altoids had a cult following among young Seattle sophisticates in the mid-1990s, Kraft tapped the advertising agency Leo Burnett for a 1995 outdoor and print campaign meant to build brand awareness beyond the Pacific Northwest.

The initially modest campaign targeted hip young adults in select American cities, and it gained momentum thanks to a mix of unconventional outdoor placements, ironic humor, and provocative images and text, all of which worked to promote the idea of Altoids' "curious" strength. The success of the outdoor campaign led Kraft and Leo Burnett to take the campaign to print media that included alternative newsweeklies and, later, national publications closely associated with the target audience. The print and outdoor ads used the same images and copy; the campaign's initial ad, featuring a male bodybuilder and copy reading, "Nice Altoids," established the retro look and knowing humor that would remain the long-running campaign's hallmark attributes.

The Altoids campaign was, from 1995 to 1999, one of the most successful in advertising history. During those years Altoids went from being a little-known niche brand with 2 percent of the breath-mint category to being the best-selling mint in America, independent of any product innovations or corporate intervention beyond the marketing campaign. The campaign won numerous awards and was adapted to the needs of new Altoids products in later years. Altoids' sales began to level off in 2002, and the brand pursued further growth through the introduction of still more product lines. In 2004 the brand was purchased, along with other Kraft-owned brands, by Chicago's Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Altoids Mints dated to eighteenth-century London, where the William Smith Co. first sold the white candies as an "antidote to poisons in the stomach." It is legend that, when George III learned that he had lost the American colonies, he first reached for an Altoid. Although Altoids entered the American market in the 1950s, the brand languished in a gum and mint industry dominated by brands such as Certs, Tic Tac, and Breath Savers. Seattle was the sole exception to this trend. The city that embraced grunge music, dark-roasted coffee, and microbrewed beer also consumed a great many tins of Altoids each year.

After Kraft Foods acquired Callard & Bowser-Suchard, it set out to revamp the marketing efforts of the British company. Although Callard had run radio advertising that featured former Monty Python comic John Cleese spoofing the mints' British heritage, there had been no concerted effort to promote the brand. According to Steffan Postaer, one of the two Leo Burnett creative directors responsible for the Altoids campaign, "Altoids had always been considered a unique item, but no one had ever put much marketing behind it." Kraft believed that, if consumers were made aware of the Altoids brand and its unique qualities, they would try and enjoy the product. Leo Burnett was given the task of constructing a campaign that would fuel demand by elevating consumer awareness.

TARGET MARKET

The offbeat and laconic humor of the campaign was intended to appeal to a sophisticated, largely urban audience. Both Kraft and Leo Burnett were aware of Altoids' success in the Seattle area, and their market research revealed that the city's progressive, hip, and educated residents were the primary consumers of Altoids. "We knew we were talking to people in the arts; people in show business; executives; people with a college education; people who had made money, people who wanted to make some money, or people who thought making money was crude," said Postaer. "We were looking to reach people who think … not just the random middle section of the culture." Moreover, age was a factor in the original target market. The campaign specifically sought to captivate those between the ages of 20 and 40.

This demographic group was most likely to prefer the stronger flavors of a more potent mint. Kitty Kevin, a food-industry analyst, explained to Minneapolis-St. Paul City Business that "the stronger mint flavor is becoming more popular because stronger flavors in food are becoming popular." As ethnic foods, with their abundant use of garlic, onion, and spices, became more prevalent, a more powerful breath-freshening mint became more desirable. Moreover, as Americans became more accustomed to new food tastes, they wanted more robust flavors in all things, including mints. "Americans have an openness toward food now," said Susan Smith, a spokesperson for the National Confectioners Association, to Tulsa World. "They like ethnic food, spicy food, and lots of high flavors." Furthermore, for a generation obsessed with its weight, three Altoids tablets had only 10 calories and no fat.

Leo Burnett strove to appeal to its target market by capitalizing on the "adult" feel of Altoids. "We have exploited the adult nature of the product," said Postaer. "Altoids are more expensive than other mints, sold where you buy cigarettes, and they look powerful—more like medicine than candy." The explicit humor and the almost stark feel of the ads were purposefully designed to emphasize this aspect of Altoids. Indeed, one ad featured the photo of a leather-clad dominatrix brandishing a Whip alongside copy reading, "Pleasure in Pain." Postaer explained, "We reached our target through the look and feel of our ads."

COMPETITION

The breath-freshener category to which Altoids belonged was a $238 million a year industry in 1997. An analyst reported to Gannett News Service that, although the mint market was substantial, its growth for the most part was "flat and slow." Altoids, however, saw its sales soar. Indeed, according to Brandweek, Altoids "raised the bar for manufacturers … in the breath-freshener category." In 1996 Altoids saw its sales rise 27 percent to reach $23.2 million for the year, and it became the fourth-best-selling brand of mint in America, behind Breath Savers, Tic Tac, and Certs. The Hartford Courant declared that Altoids were "eating into the profits generated by bad-breath-beating titans."

ITS OWN WEBSITE

Kraft Foods dedicated a website to Altoids (www.altoids.com), at which it offered, among other interactive features, free T-shirts to consumers who posted innovative uses for empty Altoids tins. Some of the more creative suggestions included pressing the tin into service as a goldfish coffin, a place to keep a nose ring or guitar picks, or a condom container. As the Altoids campaign matured, one of the website's defining features became an "Ad Gallery" devoted to some of the campaign's most memorable ads.

Needless to say, the industry took notice of Altoids' success and of the concept of "curiously strong mints" that proved to be so lucrative. A flood of potent, premium-priced mints streamed onto the market, all of which, according to Brandweek, owed a debt to Altoids. Not only did Certs, Tic Tac, and Breath Savers infuse their mints with "more flavor," but also, Warner-Lambert—the brand owner of third-ranked Certs—also introduced Certs Powerful Mints with retsyn in 1997. These more concentrated candies were packaged in a horizontal container reminiscent of the Altoids tin and cost 40 percent more than previous Certs products. Warner-Lambert devoted $10 million to advertising its new product, on top of the $20 million already used to promote other Certs offerings. Similarly, the Minneapolis-based Dayton Hudson Corp. released a new line of its well-known Frango Mints in 1997. The Frango Purely Powerful Peppermints were small white circular tablets like Altoids, and they came in pocket-sized metal tins very similar to the container so closely associated with the Altoids brand. Also in 1997, Velamints began making Intense Velamints, likewise packaged in small metal tins. Chupa Chups U.S.A. launched a new Smints product accompanied by an advertising campaign that flatly pronounced, "No Smint. No Kiss." Starbucks Coffee and the upscale department store Neiman Marcus also came out with stronger mint lines in 1997 and 1998. Overall, sales of power mints climbed 11.5 percent in the first three months of 1998 alone.

Not only did Altoids face new competition from other mint brands, but it was also challenged by chewing-gum manufacturers, who introduced so-called power gums. American Chicle added Dentyne Ice, a stronger-flavored gum, to its product line. The gum was packaged in flat cardboard boxes that resembled a pack of cigarettes more than the standard foil-and-paper chewing gum ensemble. Fleer Confections came out with small, chew-able mint squares dubbed Arctic Chews. The marketing manager of the company explained the new item to National Petroleum News: "We recognized that there was a not a lot of growth in the gum market, but there was a lot of growth in the fresh breath market."

Both Leo Burnett and Kraft Foods were faced with their competitors' efforts to capitalize on Altoids' achievements. Postaer noted that when Altoids' campaign was initiated in 1995 the British mint did not have anything resembling the sort of competition it faced two years later. "When we started out, we competed against chewing gum and candy," he said. "No mints advertised themselves as superpowerful. They had always couched their campaigns in terms of breath-freshening capacity or some other benefit. We put an interstate right through that."

MARKETING STRATEGY

Postaer and Mark Faulkner, the other creative director responsible for the campaign, were simultaneously restricted and liberated by the nominal budget Kraft allotted to the initially modest effort. For the most part the ad agency was unconstrained by corporate strategies or planners. Postaer and Faulkner proposed four possible campaigns: one that played off Altoids' British heritage; another that was "competitive," comparing Altoids to other available mints; a third that was similar to the one ultimately chosen; and, finally, the campaign that was selected, which dramatized the "curious" strength of Altoids. Since the phrase "curiously strong" had been inscribed on the Altoids box for the better than 200-year history of the mint, Postaer and Faulkner decided to base their campaign on the slogan. "Those words conveyed the exact balance of quirky charm and ownable essence that the brand represents," Postaer said.

Rather than quickly expend the campaign's budget on television spots, Kraft and Leo Burnett opted to spread the message of Altoids' curious strength through an outdoor print campaign. Because both Kraft and Leo Burnett had an accurate sense of Altoids' target market—the hip, educated, and affluent crowd that had already made the mints a success among Seattle's "alternative" population—they wanted to reach the same kinds of people in other cities. For this reason they set out to bring their message into the lives of their target market. Instead of targeting at the level of regions, states, or even cities, the advertisements were matched with specific neighborhoods in order to "reach our very definable target where they lived, worked, and played," as Postaer explained.

After the campaign's launch in Chicago in April 1995, Altoids billboards quickly went up in San Francisco and in Portland, Oregon. Particular billboards and walls in key neighborhoods were adorned with the ads. Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and New York were also among the early cities whose hippest neighborhoods were targeted. Kraft bought ad spaces on the sides of buses that traveled specific routes in order to increase the campaign's visibility in theater districts and along streets with trendy cafes and restaurants. When the campaign showed success, the ads were also placed in magazines. Alternative newspapers such as the Reader were chosen, as well as 47 more mainstream publications, including Sports Illustrated, People, Bikini, Spin, Men's Journal, and Rolling Stone. Each of the ads—with the magazine versions simply smaller copies of the billboards—featured the tongue-in-cheek humor of the first ad of the campaign: a photograph of a flexing male bodybuilder was paired with the text "Nice Altoids." Each subsequent ad also used the notion of "curious strength" as its jumping-off point. Early taglines included "Luckily Not Available in Extra Strength," "Are You a Mint or a Mouse?" "Go Medieval on Your Mouth," "Mints with a Kung Fu Grip," and "Mints So Strong They Come in a Metal Box." The campaign focused on print ads in national magazines in subsequent years, although unconventional outdoor placements remained part of the Leo Burnett arsenal even after the brand had become almost universally known. A 1999 effort, for instance, featured a poster affixed to the roof of a building near Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. The ad, visible only to airborne passengers, included the Altoids brand name as well as a message that perhaps implicitly addressed the mint's meteoric rise to the top of its category: "Look Out Below."

The campaign's controlling theme of "curious strength" was given a twist in ads touting a new Altoids flavor, Wintergreen, which was introduced in 1997. One ad, for instance, showed a young boy in a winter coat and hat, with his tongue stuck to an Altoids Wintergreen tin; others featured copy such as "Uncommon Cold," "Nuclear Wintergreen," and "Baby, That's Cold!" The fact that Altoids now boasted two flavors provided the concept for another memorable ad tailored to the brand's progressive target group: an image of the two tins was paired with copy reading "Bi-Curious?" 1999 saw Altoids' introduction of a Cinnamon flavor, and the ongoing print campaign was again modified, this time to pitch the new product's heat-generating properties. The Cinnamon launch also included a Web film element, Altoids' first flirtation with that medium. Later brand extensions—including a sour hard-candy line, a breath-strips line, a line of miniature-sized Altoids, and a gum line, in addition to Spearmint, Ginger, and Liquorice flavors of the original mint tablet—typically used the classic Altoids print format at least occasionally, though the Altoids Sours line in particular diverged from this model after its 2002 introduction. Even so, those Altoids Sours efforts that deviated from the archetypal print campaign's tactics—"Altoids Gone Sour" and "Altoidia"—continued to employ a markedly similar brand of humor while also remaining true to the "curiously strong" brand positioning first outlined by Leo Burnett in 1995.

OUTCOME

Kraft and Leo Burnett watched with glee as their campaign gained momentum. Not only did the witty print ads gain Altoids adherents among the campaign's selected target market, but the mints also became the epitome of chic for the culture at large. Rosie O'Donnell, the television talk show diva of the 1990s, conspicuously chewed Altoids during her program. Comedian Joan Rivers and actress Mariel Hemingway also lauded the mints to the Greensboro News and Record. Gannett News Service interviewed a businesswoman who succinctly described Altoids' crossover into the wider public: "It's a lot cooler than carrying around a roll of Mentos." Leo Burnett's campaign was credited with achieving its goal of driving up sales by making the product better known. At the time of the launch of the Altoids campaign in 1995, the mint's U.S. market share stood at 2 percent. By the end of 1999 the brand's market share was approaching 50 percent, and Altoids had outsold Tic Tac to become America's most popular mint.

Leo Burnett and Altoids became darlings on the ad-industry awards circuit as well. In 1996 the agency took home the Best of Show trophy at the Outdoor Advertisers Association of America's Obie Awards. The campaign was also recognized by the Chicago ADDY Awards as Best of Show. Most prestigious, however, was the honor of winning the Magazine Publishers of America's Kelly Award for the best magazine advertising campaign of 1997. Postaer gave credit to Altoids. "It was incumbent upon us to do superior advertising for this product because the product deserved it."

The intense competition created by the numerous Altoids copycat brands in the late 1990s, however, eventually took its toll. By 2002 sales had begun to plateau, and the brand pinned its hopes for future growth largely on new products such as the Altoids Sours line. In subsequent years Altoids Sours advertising eclipsed the ongoing, now-classic print campaign. In 2004, as part of a streamlining of its operations, Kraft sold the Altoids brand, along with LifeSavers and other confectionery units, to the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company.

ALTOIDS GONE SOUR CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW

NOTE: Since the writing of this essay, William Wrigley Jr. Co. bought the Altoids brand from Kraft. The essay continues to refer to Kraft, as they were the initiators of the campaign when it was first launched.

Altoids peppermints were not advertised in the United States until 1993, when Kraft Foods bought the product's manufacturer and launched a campaign meant to build on Altoids' popularity among upscale, hip Seattle residents. The ad agency Leo Burnett USA's Chicago office helmed the niche-marketing, print, and outdoor campaign, which targeted in-crowd urbanites in other major cities by using offbeat, ironic humor. The campaign touched off explosive brand growth and led Altoids to the top of the breath-mint heap, but by 2002 increased competition had begun to erode Altoids' sales. In an attempt to build the brand in a new category, Kraft introduced a hard fruit candy called Altoids Sours and again pinned its brand-building hopes on Leo Burnett.

"Altoids Gone Sour" was a combined print, outdoor, television, and online push meant to convey the idea "Your Altoids are changing." In keeping with the Altoids heritage of ironic, in-crowd appeals, the campaign used the awkwardness of adolescence as a metaphor for the idea of changing Altoids. The TV spots, Altoids' first-ever venture in the medium, ran during the summer of 2002 and mimicked old-style educational videos, while the print and outdoor ads were reproductions of 1970s yearbook photos. Together these advertisements drove traffic to an Altoids Sours website (www.gonesour.com), the layout of which resembled a school yearbook. There consumers could find out more about the change Altoids was undergoing and watch longer versions of the TV commercials.

Leo Burnett claimed that the campaign had to be discontinued because Altoids Sours sold out after the summer 2002 launch. The print portion of the campaign won numerous top honors on the 2003 ad-industry awards circuit. Altoids Sours effectively created a new candy market—hard sours for adults—and subsequent Sours advertising remained true to the Altoids heritage. In 2004 the Altoids brand was purchased by the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

First manufactured in the United Kingdom in the 18th century, Altoids peppermints were originally marketed as a cure for intestinal discomfort. They came to America via Seattle, and for most of the twentieth century their distribution network did not reach beyond the Pacific Northwest. By the late 1980s Altoids had, thanks to its slogan "curious strength" and distinctive tin-box packaging, attracted a cult-like, word-of-mouth following among the denizens of Seattle's upscale coffee shops and nightclubs, despite the fact that British confectioners Callard and Bowser-Suchard, the makers of Altoids, did virtually no U.S. advertising behind the brand. In 1993 Callard and Bowser-Suchard was bought by Kraft Foods, and Kraft hired Leo Burnett to produce a small-scale campaign that would leverage Altoids' chic image and devoted word-of-mouth following. The campaign broke in 1995.

Kraft and Leo Burnett initially ruled out any attempt to create mainstream national awareness of the Altoids brand. Instead, they focused strictly on major American cities, such as Minneapolis, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and within those cities they pinpointed neighborhoods frequented by successful, savvy young adults. Altoids posters, touting the mints' "curiously strong" flavor, were placed in bus shelters, subways, and alternative weeklies, and used ironic humor, a retro look, and offbeat, sometimes provocative imagery to appeal to their in-crowd target. For instance, a bodybuilder squeezing an Altoids tin was paired with the copy, "Nice Altoids." A dominatrix was featured in one poster along with the phrase "Pleasure in Pain." The copy that ran with some ads, "Mints so strong they come in a metal box," was adapted to fit the exterior of a Chicago El train and also ran on the backs of fare cards: "Mints for people who ride in a metal box." Other unique ad placements included a tugboat that circumnavigated New York harbor and rickshaws that traversed targeted Manhattan neighborhoods. Later ads were placed in magazines with national circulations.

The Altoids print and outdoor launch campaign was one of the most successful of its time. It won numerous ad-industry awards and triggered a period of extreme growth for the Altoids brand. Between 1995 and 1999 Altoids went from a 2 percent market share in the breath-freshener market to the category leader, besting longtime top mint Tic Tac on the way to transforming the category. Extra-strength imitators flooded the market, and Altoids itself introduced new flavors Wintergreen and Cinnamon. By 2002, however, sales had begun to slump, partly as a result of the newly saturated market. That year Kraft introduced several additional Altoids product lines, including a hard candy in sour fruit flavors meant to grow the brand in a new direction.

TARGET MARKET

The "Altoids Gone Sour" campaign, like the Altoids advertising that preceded it, targeted trendsetting urban-ites. Kraft and Leo Burnett expected the brand's heritage of "curious strength" and hipness to resonate with members of this group, whether or not those individuals were already Altoids consumers. Altoids maintained a strong hold on young adults, but the "Altoids Gone Sour" spots appealed more to a mindset than a particular age or income group. The campaign was overtly geared toward media-savvy individuals with a postmodern sense of irony, people who placed a premium on being "in the know."

The print and outdoor portions of the campaign featured humorously awkward, 1970s-style high-school yearbook photos, using the changes experienced during adolescence to introduce the idea "Your Altoids are changing." For the first time Altoids ran television commercials, airing parodies of old-style educational films that supported the adolescent theme. While the move to TV risked making the brand seem more mainstream, the spots appeared only on cable stations, and the increasingly specialized cable-TV marketplace allowed Kraft and Leo Burnett to select specific audiences with a degree of precision comparable to its established model of highly targeted print and outdoor placements. Print, outdoor, and TV advertisements all directed consumers to an Altoids Sours website, where longer versions of the TV spots were integrated, along with the print and outdoor imagery, into a school-yearbook format.

COMPETITION

One measure of Altoids' success in the late 1990s was the number of competitors who attempted to copy the brand's extra-strength product and distinctive packaging. Life Savers unveiled its Ice Breakers line, and Certs (previously number two in the category) launched Powerful Mints. Department store Neiman Marcus, discount store Target, and coffee-retailing giant Starbucks, among many others, each introduced extra-strength mints packaged in tin boxes. The proliferation of such super-mint copycats and the resultant erosion of Altoids sales was one of the reasons the brand began turning to new product lines such as Altoids Sours.

Former category leader Tic Tac, owned by Ferrero S.p.A., was virtually alone in the breath-freshener category in remaining true to its original product during the super-mint onslaught of the late 1990s. "We had the same Tic Tac strategy in 1980 as there is today," Ferrero's U.S. director of marketing told Candy Industry in 2002. Tic Tacs, like Altoids, boasted their own distinctive product and packaging, small colored pellets that rattled when shaken in their trademark plastic dispenser, and though Ferrero lost market share as well as its industry-leading position to Altoids in the late 1990s, the Tic Tac formula continued to prove successful. As the breath-mint category showed signs of waning in 2002 and Altoids turned to fruity flavors, Tic Tac likewise began to emphasize fruit. Having noticed more sales consistency from its orange flavor during the mint downturn, Ferrero accordingly made its seasonal lime flavor a permanent part of the Tic Tac stable.

Meanwhile, Vitech America, Inc., was one of the only confections manufacturers to have a preexisting product positioned to compete with Altoids Sours. Vitech's Squyntz! were, like Altoids Sours, one of the few fruit candies targeting adults. Vitech, which also boasted an Altoids competitor called Myntz!, began developing a marketing push in 2002 to position its candies, in the Altoids manner, as fashion accessories for discerning consumers.

MARKETING STRATEGY

Altoids Sours applied the principle of extra-strength flavor to a sour fruit candy for adults. At the time the hard-candy market was primarily focused on children, so Kraft and Leo Burnett saw themselves as creating a new product category, as they had done with the original Altoids campaign in the 1990s. The Altoids strategy of using irony and a retro look to speak to knowing, cutting-edge hipsters remained in place, but the "Altoids Sours" campaign had its own distinctive look and trajectory. As Altoids' senior brand manager Andrew Burke told Advertising Age, "[Moving into hard candy] is a big change, and we thought, 'How do we take the next step?'"

THE FLAVORS

Altoids built its brand on a single, centuries-old, extra-strength peppermint flavor, but with increasing competition after its hugely successful late-1990s marketing campaign, the brand began diversifying into other "curiously strong" flavors as a way of building and maintaining market share. The Altoids mints line was enlarged to include wintergreen, cinnamon, and spearmint; the Altoids Sours line expanded beyond its initial offering of citrus and tangerine to include apple and raspberry; a line of Altoids breath strips was launched and then discontinued; and Altoids branched out into gum, with peppermint and cinnamon flavors as well as Sours gum in apple and cherry flavors. A tiny version of the original Altoids mints was launched, complete with its own tiny tin, and a Specialty line, featuring ginger and licorice flavors, rounded out the Altoids family of products.

That next step included, significantly, television advertising. The Altoids brand had been built on its cutting-edge, alternative image, so television represented a calculated risk. As Leo Burnett's Steffan Postaer said, "The biggest reason not to [use TV] was the fear of going mainstream." A changing cable marketplace, however, meant that the Sours commercials could be programmed to reach Altoids' core audience of culturally aware, trend-setting types.

Airing during the summer of 2002 on cable networks that included MTV, VH1, E! Entertainment, and Bravo, the Sours TV spots were 15-second versions of 60-second Web films. The TV commercials were meant to spark interest in the new product and drive traffic to an Altoids Sours website (www.gonesour.com), whose layout mimicked a school yearbook and where, among other features, the full films were available for viewing. Parodying educational videos aimed at schoolchildren of an earlier era, the Web films reproduced the grainy look of old film reels and their accompanying cautionary voice-over, while weaving Altoids Sours into their storylines. In "Making Friends with Fruit," for instance, a boy in early adolescence was shown arriving at a pool party with actual citrus fruit in a metal lunch-box. When another boy attracted the attention of numerous girls with his circular tin of Altoids Sours, the voice-over proclaimed the film's message: "When making friends, not just any fruit in a metal box will do." Another Web film, "Healthy Curiosity," featured a boy performing science experiments in a school laboratory. During the course of an experiment designed to determine "what makes sour things sour," the boy fed an Altoids Sour to the class's pet guinea pig. The guinea pig exploded, providing "scientific evidence of curiously strong citrus sour flavor."

The print and outdoor portions of the "Altoids Gone Sour" campaign, which communicated the idea "Your Altoids are changing," without providing any full explanation of that change, likewise drove traffic to the campaign's website. In keeping with the TV spots and the website format, the print ads and outdoor posters were reproductions of 1970s yearbook photos featuring humorously awkward adolescents. A teenage girl was shown above copy that read, "Soon your Altoids will blossom." The other three school portraits were of boys. One photograph ran with copy advising, "Don't be afraid to explore your Altoids"; another declared, "It's normal for your Altoids to change"; and a third informed consumers, "My Altoids are changing, and I'm OK with that." Each of the print spots included the www.gone-sour.com website address.

OUTCOME

Within the first four weeks of the product launch, the "Altoids Gone Sour" push resulted in more than 500,000 visits to the brand's interactive website. Sales of Altoids Sours exceeded expectations. According to Leo Burnett, the campaign was so successful that it had to be discontinued: Altoids Sours sold out after the launch. The print component of the campaign was a star on the 2003 advertising-awards circuit, winning a Clio, an Andy, and a Gold EFFIE.

Subsequent Altoids Sours advertising remained true to the brand's trademark ironic humor and retro imagery and helped the Altoids brand stake out another new category in the candy industry. A print and outdoor campaign similar to classic Altoids posters used copy such as "Fruity Yet Strong" and "One Bad Motherpucker" in 2003. In 2004 the Altoids brand was purchased, along with LifeSavers and other Kraft confectionery divisions, by the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company. Altoids' second-ever TV campaign followed. Also featuring print and online components, the TV spots starred a fictional British anthropologist and explorer, Sir Gerald Pines, who reported, in mock-documentary format, on the Altoidians, an aboriginal tribe whose "constant exposure to curiously strong sour has rendered them immune to pain." The Sir Pines spots helped Leo Burnett and new Altoids owners Wrigley to win a 2005 Gold Lion at the International Advertising Festival in Cannes, France.

GOTTA HAVE TWISTED SWEET CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW

Soon after its introduction in 1893, the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company's Juicy Fruit chewing gum became the best-selling gum in the United States. Although Juicy Fruit was still number one in the early 2000s, with a 31 percent market share worldwide, the brand was losing ground to other gum brands, including Cadbury Schweppes' Trident, Dentyne, and Chiclets brands, which together claimed a 26 percent share of the worldwide chewing-gum market.

To reconnect with its key consumers—kids ages 12 to 17-in 2002 Wrigley launched an effort to reposition its Juicy Fruit brand. The company updated the product's packaging, and its longtime agency, BBDO Chicago, created edgy new television spots as part of its ongoing "Gotta Have Sweet" campaign. In 2003 Wrigley introduced two new Juicy Fruit flavors, Grapermelon and Strappleberry, each of which twisted together two different fruits. To support the new products' launch, BBDO revamped the "Gotta Have Sweet" campaign as "Gotta Have Twisted Sweet" and created new television spots, print ads, and a print-to-Web effort, which used print ads to direct consumers to a Juicy Fruit website.

The "Gotta Have Twisted Sweet" campaign had mixed results. Two television spots, "Piñata" and "No Dummy," were named Best Spots by Adweek in 2003 and 2004, respectively. Also in 2004, at the Chicago Creative Club's annual award ceremony, the Juicy Fruit television spot "Officeflage" earned both the People's Choice award, which was voted on by the public, and the Best of Show award, which was determined by a panel of judges. In 2005, however, the campaign's print-to-Web segment was cited by the Children's Advertising Review Unit for being potentially misleading to the young consumers it targeted. Following the ruling Wrigley ended the print-to-Web advertising, but the television spots and other print ads were continued in 2005.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company got its start in 1891 selling soap, a product that William Wrigley, Jr.'s father manufactured. To boost sales the younger Wrigley offered customers free premiums, including baking powder, with each purchase. Realizing that baking powder was more popular with customers than the soap, Wrigley began selling baking powder and offering packages of chewing gum as the free premium. The gum was an even bigger hit with customers, and in 1892 Wrigley began to sell chewing gum under his own name. Wrigley's first gum brands were Lotta and Vassar. Juicy Fruit was introduced in 1893 and quickly became the number one gum brand in the United States. Its flavor, though fruity, was never associated with any particular fruit.

During World War II Wrigley stopped selling Juicy Fruit and its other gum brands to American consumers, dedicating the entire available product to the country's military troops. To ensure that consumers did not forget the brand while it was unavailable, Wrigley launched an unusual marketing campaign in 1944 that consisted of print ads with a picture of the gum wrapper and the tagline "Remember this wrapper!" When the brand was reintroduced to American consumers in 1946, its ads had the tagline "For a refreshing change enjoy this completely different flavour."

One of Juicy Fruit's most notable taglines, "Taste is gonna move you," was introduced in 1983. By 1998 the slogan had lost its appeal with consumers, especially teens, Juicy Fruit's key market. Confronted with dropping sales, the company and its ad agency, BBDO Chicago, conducted extensive research among kids who chewed Juicy Fruit gum to learn what they liked about the product. The answer was that they chewed the gum because it was sweet. Based on the research the "Gotta Have Sweet" campaign was released in August 1998.

When William Wrigley, Jr., great-grandson of the company's founder, took over as chief executive officer in 1999 following the death of his father, the 35-year-old became the fourth generation of the family to head up Wrigley. In 2001 he revamped the company's marketing department and began looking past BBDO Chicago, which had worked with Wrigley for more than 70 years, for new ideas for marketing Wrigley products. BBDO heeded the warning and updated the agency's campaign efforts for Wrigley's gum brands. In addition, Juicy Fruit's packaging was redesigned for the first time since the 1980s, and to promote its two new flavors, in 2003 the "Gotta Have Sweet" campaign was modified as "Gotta Have Twisted Sweet."

TARGET MARKET

Besides being the number one fruit-flavored brand of gum in the United States among all consumers, Juicy Fruit also was the best-selling gum among kids 12 to 17 years old. Juicy Fruit had always been considered a bridge between kid-favored bubble gum and more adult gum choices such as Wrigley's Spearmint, and the two new flavors added to the Juicy Fruit family—Grapermelon and Strappleberry—were designed specifically for teens moving beyond bubble gum. Consumers in the company's target audience were described by the Chicago Sun-Times as "Skippies," schoolkids with income and purchasing power. According to Teenage Research Unlimited, a Chicago-based company that tracked trends among youths, Skippies spent $170 billion on products for themselves or their families in 2002, up from $155 billion in 2000. Reaching this key demographic was the goal of Wrigley's edgy new campaign, "Gotta Have Twisted Fruit." As the popularity of the new flavors became evident, Wrigley shifted its focus to even younger consumers, targeting children 8 to 11 years old.

COMPETITION

Cadbury Schweppes, based in London, England, was best known as the number three producer of soft drinks, behind the Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo. Its beverage brands included 7 Up, A&W Root Beer, Dr Pepper, and Hawaiian Punch. In 2003 Cadbury completed a $4.2 billion deal with New York-based Pfizer, Inc., and purchased the pharmaceutical giant's Adams candy division. Included in the purchase were the Adams gum brands Trident, Dentyne, and Bubbas. Adding the Adams gum brands to its product offerings pushed Cadbury into the number two spot in the chewing-gum market, with a 26 percent worldwide share (behind Wrigley, which had a 31 percent share). Cadbury also claimed one-third of the sugarless-gum market in the United States. In 2004 Cadbury announced plans to expand its Trident brand to include fruit flavors; these would directly compete with Wrigley's fruit-flavored Juicy Fruit.

For more than 50 years the Topps Company of New York had given bubble-gum lovers and collectors of sports memorabilia a combination of their two favorite things: packs of Bazooka bubble gum and sports trading cards. Since its introduction in the 1940s Topps had used a variety of marketing techniques to increase its Bazooka brand's appeal to kids, including introducing Bazooka Joe comics in 1953 and adding new flavors, such as grape, strawberry, and a sugarless variety, to the original gum. The company also increased the variety of sports trading cards that were packaged with the gum; from the original cards, introduced in 1951, that featured pictures of baseball stars, the offerings were expanded to include popular hockey players beginning in 1954, football players in 1955, and basketball players in 1957. In 1967 Topps introduced Wacky Packages trading cards, which were sold with Bazooka bubble gum. The cards spoofed everything from Jell-O (tagged Jail-O and called the favorite dessert of Sing Sing inmates) to Minute Rice (Minute Lice) and were a hit with junior high school students. The 1985 introduction of Garbage Pail Kids trading cards, a parody of Cabbage Patch Kids dolls, helped fuel sales of Bazooka bubble gum despite complaints from parents that the gross-out humor of the cards was in poor taste. The Wacky Packages were discontinued in 1976, and the Garbage Pail Kids were canceled in 1988, but Topps reintroduced the trading cards to a new audience of young consumers in 2003 (Garbage Pail Kids) and 2004 (Wacky Packs).

MARKETING STRATEGY

In 2003 Wrigley added to its 100-year-old brand Juicy Fruit two new flavors, Grapermelon and Strappleberry, that each combined, or twisted together, two fruit flavors. The company turned to its longtime agency, BBDO Chicago, for an advertising campaign that would support the 2003 launch of the product. The new campaign, themed "Gotta Have Twisted Sweet," was a variation on the brand's "Gotta Have Sweet" campaign, which had begun in 1998. Staying with the original campaign's humorous theme, the new one put a unique edge on seemingly ordinary situations to promote the new gum flavors. Included were television spots that targeted teens and 20-somethings, print ads aimed at middle school kids, and a print-to-Web effort that was developed for kids as young as eight years old.

The initial television spot, "Piñata," aired in October 2003 and depicted a children's birthday party. The center of attention, however, was not the birthday girl but a donkey-shaped piñata full of goodies and suspended from the ceiling. The celebrants took turns whacking the piñata in an effort to break it and get the treats inside. When it was finally broken, it dropped from the ceiling and began chasing one of the children who had grabbed the package of Grapermelon Juicy Fruit. After retrieving the prized gum from the terrified child, the piñata made its escape through a dog door. Another spot, "Officeflage," featured office workers camouflaging themselves as office furniture and equipment in order to grab a pack of the new Juicy Fruit gum from their unsuspecting coworkers. The first worker bought a pack of Strappleberry from an office vending machine. As he walked down the hall preparing to pop a piece of the gum into his mouth, a coworker disguised as a file cabinet swiped the pack of gum, shook off the disguise, and ran down the hall. As the second coworker stopped to retrieve a piece of gum, a third person, who had been lurking on a windowsill disguised as miniblinds, jumped from the window, snatched the gum, and ran into the office lunchroom. As he sat on the floor opening the treasured pack of gum, he noticed another coworker disguised as a water cooler poised to grab the Juicy Fruit.

JUICY FRUIT FASHION FOR BRITISH FANS

Beginning in 2002 girls and young women in England could do more than chew Juicy Fruit gum. They could also head to a nearby Top Shop or Debenhams department store to buy Juicy Fruit-branded clothes. The new line, available only in select U.K. stores, included four styles of tops, hats, belts, and bags. According to a Wrigley spokeswoman, the new apparel targeted girls and women ages 11 to 24 years old.

The campaign continued in 2004 with a third television spot. As with "Piñata," the new spot involved an inanimate object coming to life. In "No Dummy" a class of high school students were shown beside a swimming pool learning CPR. As a teenage boy was practicing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a dummy, it came to life and stole the Juicy Fruit gum from his mouth. With the gum in its own mouth, the dummy made its escape, losing an arm and a leg in the process. When the dummy crashed its getaway vehicle—a bicycle—into a car and was knocked unconscious, the boy caught up, retrieved his gum, and continued performing CPR on the dummy. The television spots aired on national network and cable channels, such as MTV, that ran programming that appealed to teens.

Print-to-Web ads, which appeared in Disney Adventures magazine and targeted younger kids, also adopted a unique approach. Described as "mock ads" by the Promotions Marketing Industry, the two separate ads listed websites that appeared to promote a new boy band (www.luvboiseboys.com) and a movie (www.lambzilla.com) by directing readers to the Internet sites. When readers visited either website, however, rather than images of the band or scenes from the movie, they reached a Juicy Fruit webpage that played the "Gotta Have Twisted Sweet" television spot "No Dummy." Other print ads, aimed at preteens and tagged "Gotta Have Twisted Comics," ran in Nickelodeon magazine. The ads, which employed a comic-strip format, followed the ongoing adventures of students at the fictitious Dewey Needit Junior High School and eventually answered the question, "Who gets the Juicy Fruit in the end?"

OUTCOME

The "Gotta Have Twisted Sweet" campaign's television spots were included in Adweek 's Best Spots list in both 2003 and 2004; the "Piñata" spot was recognized in 2003, and the "No Dummy" spot was recognized the following year. Also in 2004, the Chicago Creative Club, an organization of Chicago-based advertising and design leaders that each year recognized the high standards of the Chicago creative community, presented its annual People's Choice honors to the "Officeflage" spot. "Officeflage" was named the Best of Show in the TV Commercial category as well.

Although the "Twisted Sweet" television spots were well received, the print ads that appeared in Disney Adventures magazine were criticized by the Children's Advertising Review Unit (CARU), a division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus and the self-regulatory forum of the children's-advertising industry. CARU cited that portion of the campaign for using mock ads that supposedly led children to websites for either a new band or a new movie but that actually directed Internet users to a Juicy Fruit ad. According to a report in Advertising Age, CARU stated that the overall print-to-Web campaign was "potentially misleading" and misinformed youngsters about the source of the ads. Further, CARU noted that, while older children might understand the humor of the commercial featuring a CPR dummy that came to life, stole a boy's gum, and was ultimately chased down by the boy, the commercial "could be too disturbing for younger children." Wrigley agreed to pull the online commercial. The websites were also discontinued.

NO MATTER WHAT CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW

In 2001, supported by a campaign titled "No Matter What," the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company introduced its Orbit gum, long available in Europe, to the United States. Orbit was different from such Wrigley brands as Doublemint and Juicy Fruit in that it was sugar-free, and the introduction of Orbit in the United States occurred at a time of increasing emphasis on dental health. Wrigley, however, was not the first U.S. company to offer sugar-free gum, for competitor Trident had been sugar-free since the 1960s. In fact, Orbit was not the first sugarless Wrigley product available in the United States; the company's Extra had been introduced in 1984 and Eclipse in 1999. Still, Wrigley wanted another alternative in its sugar-free lineup, especially since U.S. sales of chewing gum had been lagging for a decade. The timing turned out to be perfect, for in 2002 Wrigley's top two U.S. competitors—Trident and Dentyne—were purchased by Cadbury Schweppes. Thus, the competition in the chewing gum market intensified, and Wrigley, with a wider selection, was in a better position to compete.

The "No Matter What" campaign, led by the Chicago advertising agency Energy BBDO, sought to target a market of working people and their families between the ages of 18 and 49. The ads featured the actress Vanessa Branch, usually referred to simply as Vanessa, as a vivacious researcher at the so-called Orbit Institute, showing how the gum could help people feel neater and more "put together." They were also used as a way to introduce new flavors of Orbit gum. Television spots, which accounted for most of the total costs of the campaign, were aimed at showing how Orbit could leave a mouth clean "no matter what." In a variety of humorous scenarios the New York Times pegged as "seemingly inspired by Austin Powers movies," including one in which a tourist was nearly eaten by an enormous Venus flytrap, Vanessa was able to keep any mouth clean she happened to stumble across. The television spots were supported by other marketing efforts, including print ads and point-of-relevance posters that appeared in such places as taxicabs.

The "No Matter What" campaign was a success on several levels. First, studies measuring both advertising awareness and brand linkage among viewers of the television spots showed that the campaign had indeed reached its intended audience. The campaign won advertising honors, including a prestigious EFFIE Award, for its achievements. In addition, financial results seemed to confirm the success of the campaign. In 2004, just three years after Orbit had been introduced, the gross sales of all Orbit products in the United States exceeded $90 million, and the gum was outselling second-place Trident. Further, Orbit was accounting for one-third of Wrigley's profits.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

William Wrigley, Jr., founded the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company in Chicago in 1891. At first he sold soap, but he soon replaced soap with baking soda. In a move that demonstrated his flair for marketing, Wrigley offered customers a bonus with every purchase of Wrigley's Baking Powder: two packages of chewing gum. By 1892 Wrigley had begun selling packs of chewing gum independently, marketing the product under his own name. The first two brands were Vassar and Lotta, followed in 1893 by Juicy Fruit and Wrigley's Spearmint.

Wrigley was a true salesman, believing in his products and enthusiastically spreading the word about them. As he put it, to be successful a businessman had to "make a good product at a fair price—then tell the world." But Wrigley did not simply send salesmen onto the streets to sell his products directly, which at the time was the common marketing strategy. Instead, he became one of the first entrepreneurs to use large-scale advertising to promote sales. In the early 1900s Wrigley began to advertise his chewing gum in newspapers and magazines, as well as on outdoor posters. The ads promoted the gum's ability to provide relief for indigestion and stress. They were intended to reach the general population of consumers, who would then request that their local stores carry Wrigley chewing gum. Wrigley understood that retail stores could reach far more potential customers than could a sales force. Although it was not widely used at the time, this marketing strategy was simple.

In the 1930s Wrigley introduced the "Doublemint Twins" campaign, which became one of the most successful advertising efforts ever developed in the United States. Playing on the "Doublemint" name, the campaign portrayed the double-image concept in various ways. The earliest ads in the campaign were radio spots that featured, among others, two piano players, two comedians, and two violinists. Billboard ads featured air-brushed images of innocent-looking twins chewing the gum. From 1959 through 1963 Jayne and Joan Boyd appeared as the Doublemint twins. Projecting a tone of innocence, they appeared in a series of 12 commercials in which they portrayed the fun of being double as they sang the jingle "Double your pleasure, double your fun with Doublemint gum." The jingle, as well as the twins concept, was used through the 1980s. The company then tried a series of new campaigns, although all remained true to the theme of innocence. These later campaigns included "Small-Town America" in the 1980s and "Healthy Gums" in the 1990s. In 2005 the company reintroduced the "Doublemint Twins" campaign. Meanwhile, however, the company had launched the "No Matter What" campaign to promote the Orbit brand. With sugar-free Orbit, which had long been popular in Europe, the company hoped to gain a new wave of customers in the United States.

TARGET MARKET

Wrigley's sugar-free Orbit was introduced in the United States in 2001 as an aid to dental health. Its first national advertising campaign claimed that "regular chewing helps knock tooth decay into orbit." The tagline reinforced the point by maintaining that the gum would convey a "just brushed clean feeling." Orbit White, which contained sodium bicarbonate, a tooth-whitening agent, was introduced in January 2002. This newest product followed a three-year trend that had made whitening products the fastest-growing group in oral care.

The "No Matter What" campaign targeted people between the ages of 18 and 49, who accounted for more than half of all gum purchases in the United States. Research indicated that, of potential consumers, those most likely to use the product were people who lived busy lives involving work and a family. These were the people for whom the feeling of a clean mouth was most important. Research also showed that this customer base wanted a variety of gum flavors, not simply mint. Thus, by 2005 a total of seven flavors of Orbit were available in the United States, all of them promoted through the "No Matter What" campaign.

COMPETITION

The year after Orbit was introduced in the United States, its top two competitors, Trident and Dentyne, had a new owner. In December 2002 the British food giant Cadbury Schweppes purchased Adams, the maker of both gums, from the U.S. pharmaceutical company Pfizer as a result of the $4.2 billion deal, Cadbury Adams USA LLC was created. But Trident and Dentyne had both established their names in the chewing gum business much earlier.

In the 1960s Trident became the first national brand of sugar-free chewing gum to be sold in the United States. Its 1964 advertising slogan, "The Great Taste That Is Good for Your Teeth," promoted the fact that the gum used saccharin instead of sugar. When the advertising changed with the claim that "4 out of 5 dentists surveyed would recommend sugarless gum to their patients who chew gum," Trident immediately became associated with dental health. The "4 out of 5" pitch continued through the following decades, reinforcing the association. In 2001 Trident introduced a tooth-whitening gum, Trident White, which competed directly with Orbit White. Within a mere nine months Trident White had gained more than 60 percent of all whitening gum sales. Cadbury Adams undertook large-scale advertising efforts for Trident. In 2004, largely to compete against Wrigley, the company spent an astonishing $60 million on Trident advertising. The new campaign featured the adventures of Little Mouth, an animated wind-up, chattering mouth. At the same time Trident continued to expand the flavors offered, a necessity in a market that demanded variety. New flavors introduced by the Little Mouth character included Watermelon Twist, Trident Splash Strawberry with Lime, and Trident Splash Peppermint with Vanilla.

While advertising for Orbit and Trident focused on the dental health of the general population, that for sugar-free Dentyne focused on the youth market. Dentyne's target market was 15- to 24-year-old daters in search of fresh breath. The Dentyne Ice brand, introduced in 1996, illustrated this focus, with its advertising most often featuring young couples kissing. In one such ad, as a young man attempted to kiss his attractive date, he imagined himself surrounded by every guy she had ever kissed, which made him feel insecure. Dentyne Ice served as a quick confidence booster, however, and he carried on with the kiss. After Cadbury Adams bought the company, advertising for Dentyne was skewed toward an even younger target market. For example, a 2004 digital campaign with the tagline "Go bold!" was aimed at 13- to 17-year-olds, with ads running on Yahoo!'s instant-messenger and Launch music platforms.

THE WAR ON GUM

In 2004, when the William Wrigley Jr. Company won licenses to sell Orbit in Singapore, that country lifted a 12-year ban on the sale and use of chewing gum. The ban had been imposed after someone stuck a wad of chewing gum in the door of a high-speed commuter train, causing serious delays in service. But the lifting of the ban did not come without conditions. Orbit could be sold over the counter only by pharmacists, who were required to record the names of those who bought the product.

MARKETING STRATEGY

Wrigley's "No Matter What" campaign was launched following a decade-long lag in sales of chewing gum in the United States. At the same time other breath-freshening products, such as mints and breath strips, were experiencing sales increases. In response Wrigley introduced sugar-free Orbit, with the large-scale advertising campaign led by Energy BBDO, an agency based in Chicago. The ads featured the actress Vanessa as the spokesperson, demonstrating how Orbit could transform any "dirty" mouth into one that felt clean. As such, the ads directly targeted Orbit's market, reinforcing the link between a clean mouth and a well-organized life. In the ads Vanessa found herself in a variety of "scenes of the grime," seeking to prove that "no matter what" Orbit left all sorts of mouths feeling clean.

The "No Matter What" campaign, which cost an average of $5 to $10 million a year between 2001 and 2005, included television and magazine advertising, as well as point-of-relevance posters. The latter were displayed in areas likely to reach Orbit's target audience: taxicabs, which were used by busy American workers; nail salons and health clubs, to reinforce the idea that the gum could help a person look and feel good; and dental offices, which supported the idea of a mouth that felt clean. In addition, new gum flavors introduced during the campaign were displayed in stores on shelf danglers, which helped highlight the new flavors and entice customers to try them. It was the television commercials, however, that accounted for the bulk of the advertising budget, on average 87 percent of all spending. From 2001 through 2005 several commercials were aired, largely on prime-time and late-night shows in an effort to reach the target audience. Each time a new commercial was introduced, it ran frequently in order to create brand presence before it then tapered off.

Each of the "No Matter What" television spots portrayed dirty mouths turned clean by Orbit. The mouths included those of a teacher, a school bus driver, a mailman, a biker, lovers at a picnic, clowns, and even a Venus flytrap. Although the initial emphasis was on introducing the Orbit brand in the United States, as new flavors became available, the focus of the campaign shifted. In 2003, for instance, the two television spots "Clowns" and "Equestrian" were used to introduce the new flavors Cinnamint and Bubblement. In the spirit of the campaign, one commercial showed Vanessa improving the dirty mouths of clowns and the other of a female rider. In 2005, in the hilarious "Fly Trap," in which a visitor to a botanical garden was swallowed by the world's largest Venus flytrap, Vanessa improved the dirty mouth of the plant while introducing Orbit's newest flavor, Citrus Mint. During the campaign other, more unconventional ways were used to promote Orbit. In 2003, for example, Wrigley sponsored the Chews Wisely Challenge, in which assistants of Vanessa, dressed in lab coats, appeared in such areas as Pike Place Market in Seattle to ask people to compare the taste of Orbit to that of Trident.

OUTCOME

The "No Matter What" campaign was successful in introducing Orbit in the United States. In 2004, the gross U.S. sales of all Orbit products exceeded $90 million, beating competitor Trident by nearly $8 million. According to Wrigley, by this point Orbit was accounting for a third of its total domestic profits. Further, Orbit had become the third best-selling gum in the United States, behind two other Wrigley products, Extra ($146 million in sales) and Eclipse ($93.3 million).

The "No Matter What" television commercials were given much of the credit, by both Wrigley and by advertising critics, for the campaign's success. As the New York Times put it, "The cheeky commercials, which also took occasional swipes at a not-so-mysterious 'Brand T,' quickly propelled most Orbit products to the top of the sales charts." As a result of the success of the campaign, new flavors were quickly added to the Orbit brand, and by 2005 seven were available: Original Peppermint, Spearmint, Wintermint, Bubblemint, Cinnamint, Citrusmint, and Sweet Mint.

The campaign also won awards from the advertising industry. The 2005 "Fly Trap" commercial earned recognition from Adweek as one of its Best Spots. The 2003 commercials "Clowns" and "Equestrian," which promoted the new flavors Cinnamint and Bubblemint, won an EFFIE Award. Created by the New York American Marketing Association in 1968, the EFFIE focused on the results of advertising campaigns, and the results of the 2003 spots were impressive. As indicated by a 2004 Communicus Advertising Effectiveness Study, the commercials succeeded in reaching customers. The study revealed that among viewers "Clowns" resulted in an advertising awareness of 46 percent and a brand linkage of 23 percent, with the numbers for "Equestrian" being 61 percent and 26 percent, respectively. These results were well above the norms of 37 percent for advertising awareness and 13 percent for brand linkage. Supported by their award-winning advertising, the new Cinnamint and Bubblemint flavors came to account for two-thirds of the overall growth of Orbit.

Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company

Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company

Working in the Soap Business in the Late 1800s

Wrigley’s Spearmint and Juicy Fruit Make Their Debut: 1893

Advertising Begins in 1907

Company Perspectives

Survival during the War Effort

Overcoming Image and Pricing Obstacles: 1960s–1970s

Key Dates

Successful Advertising: 1980s to the Early 1990s

Changing Direction: 1990s and Beyond

Principal Subsidiaries

Principal Competitors

Further Reading

WM. Wrigley Jr. Company

WM. Wrigley Jr. Company

Principal Subsidiaries

Further Reading

Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company

Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company

ALTOIDS CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

TARGET MARKET

COMPETITION

ITS OWN WEBSITE

MARKETING STRATEGY

OUTCOME

FURTHER READING

ALTOIDS GONE SOUR CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

TARGET MARKET

COMPETITION

MARKETING STRATEGY

THE FLAVORS

OUTCOME

FURTHER READING

GOTTA HAVE TWISTED SWEET CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

TARGET MARKET

COMPETITION

MARKETING STRATEGY

JUICY FRUIT FASHION FOR BRITISH FANS

OUTCOME

FURTHER READING

NO MATTER WHAT CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

TARGET MARKET

COMPETITION

THE WAR ON GUM

MARKETING STRATEGY

OUTCOME

FURTHER READING

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