Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id IAA01416 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 26 Feb 2002 08:58:23 GMT Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3102A6D295@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: Breath Mints: A Hot War for America's Cool Mouths Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 08:49:57 -0000 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" X-Filter-Info: UoS MailScan 0.1 [D 1] Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Slzberger must have friends at pfizer for this piece of corporate fluff.
Vincent
> ----------
> From: Wade T.Smith
> Reply To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2002 16:34 PM
> To: skeptic@listproc.hcf.jhu.edu; memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Subject: Fwd: Breath Mints: A Hot War for America's Cool Mouths
>
> Breath Mints: A Hot War for America's Cool Mouths
> By ALEX KUCZYNSKI
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/24/fashion/24MINT.html?pagewanted=print
>
> MORRIS PLAINS, N.J. -- On a wintry Tuesday afternoon, Dr. Richard W.
> D'Souza, the vice president for oral health care of Pfizer , stood in
> front of a shelf stacked with gallon jugs labeled Artificial Saliva and
> Pooled Human Saliva, and spoke about the art of killing.
>
> "They are nasty little buggers, and they should die," Dr. D'Souza said,
> offering a look through a microscope at a dish of proliferating microbes
> swabbed from a colleague's mouth. "We have learned how to get rid of
> them, how to annihilate them, how to kill the wild germs in their
> natural habitat."
>
> Dr. D'Souza is the General Patton of bad breath. And his fervor is not
> out of place. As the mere breath mint becomes a fashion accessory and a
> statement of identity, the $3 billion fresh-breath industry is
> exploding, pitting giant corporations against one another in the race to
> freshen gamy American mouths.
>
> In the last 18 months, major mint and gum manufacturers - Kraft Foods,
> Pfizer, the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, Hershey Foods and Playtex Products
> - have introduced breath-freshening products and repackaged old ones to
> refashion the humble breath mint or mouth spray.
>
> At Pfizer, Dr. D'Souza and Dr. Pauline C. Pan, a senior microbiologist,
> supervised the development of the Listerine PocketPaks, a stamp-size
> container that dispenses strips that look like murky-green Scotch tape
> and dissolve on the tongue. The PocketPaks can be bought with a matching
> key chain and will be giveaways at the Oscars.
>
> The appeal of the mint as accessory stretches across demographic lines.
> Where bad breath was once considered the province of old men with dental
> problems and cigar habits, it is now being peddled to the public as an
> affliction that affects all ages, from 8 to 80.
>
> At the same time, the pop-cultural implications of a freshly minty mouth
> have shifted significantly for Generation X, from the happy-go-lucky
> innocence of a Dentyne smile to more salacious connotations -
> highlighted by Monica Lewinsky's descriptions of the intimate effects of
> Altoids. Elizabeth Wenner, a spokeswoman for Kraft, which manufactures
> Altoids, said its product had altered the landscape.
>
> "Altoids changed many Americans' perception of what a mint could be,
> namely, an essential lifestyle accessory," she said. "Eating and sharing
> Altoids became somewhat of a social ritual, particularly among young
> adults, predominantly in urban areas."
>
> Beyond Generation X, manufacturers are playing on the baby boomers' lust
> for self-improvement by packaging mints to highlight their therapeutic
> uses. (Wrigley has even introduced a minty antacid gum called Surpass.)
> And manufacturers are using novel packaging - mints on key chains, mints
> in containers that make sound effects, mint strips that dissolve on the
> tongue - to market to children and young adults.
>
> But the obsession with fresh breath is not all the boomers' doing. The
> industry began to grow after the InterScan Corporation in California
> developed a device called the halimeter in 1992, which measures foul
> breath, or halitosis. (InterScan normally makes instruments that detect
> toxic gases in factories.) Armed with the new research the halimeter
> provided, manufacturers went nuts.
>
> Continuing a five-year growth trend, sales of breath-freshening mints,
> gums and lozenges were up 15.3 percent in 2001, said Susan Fussell, a
> spokeswoman for the National Confectioners Association. That rate far
> outpaced sales of chocolate, sweet chewing gum and other candies, which
> grew by 2.9 percent.
>
> "The biggest trend today is breath freshening," Ms. Fussell said.
> "You're seeing a proliferation, especially in the last year and a half,
> in anything that is going to make your breath minty, minty fresh.
> Everyone is rushing to get something out."
>
> Packaging is crucial. If consumers shun the Binaca Blast atomizer, with
> its geeky 1970's evocations of John Travolta's Casanova role on "Welcome
> Back, Kotter," they can try Binaca Power Blasts mints, which come in a
> cartoonish tin that makes a loud Snapplesque popping noise when opened
> or closed, and the slogan reads "Fresh Breath Is Just a Click Away!"
>
> "It's become trendy," Ms. Fussell said. "Who has the latest mint? Who
> has the newest container on the playground? And that expands into
> Generation X, with Kate Spade mints and Victoria's Secret selling
> lipstick-shaped mints."
>
> David A. Shore, a Harvard marketing professor, said the PocketPaks could
> have been a huge failure.
>
> "Consumers have greater trust issues with products that come into
> contact with the skin or the mouth," he said. "But the beauty of the
> PocketPaks is that they did not stray too far from the parent brand,
> Listerine. They developed a kind of mystique and maintained a level of
> comfort at the same time."
>
> Searching for that same magical combination, the long-conservative
> Wrigley company, under a new chief executive, has introduced Orbit, an
> intensely flavored pellet gum packaged in a credit-card-size plastic
> case designed to appeal to young adults. The company revamped
> Winterfresh - which it now distributes at events like the MTV Music
> Video Awards and the Extreme Games - and Big Red, dumping the jingle
> "kiss a little longer" in favor of the musings of Clyde, a hipster who
> dispenses fashion advice.
>
> Competing against Wrigley is Hershey Foods, which bought Carefree from
> Nabisco in December 2000 and revamped it as the hipper, kid-friendly
> Carefree Koolerz.
>
> Responding to a post-Altoids consumer preference for nasal-flaring
> flavors, Amurol, a Wrigley division, introduced Everest, a pellet gum
> that tastes like Altoids, looks like Altoids and comes in a tin like
> Altoids. Battling back, Kraft Foods added new extra-strong flavors to
> its Altoids line.
>
> And last October, after five years of research and development, Pfizer
> introduced the PocketPaks. The inch-square plastic box dispenses sheets
> of Listerine distilled onto a substance called pullulan, a carbohydrate
> matrix that dissolves on contact with saliva.
>
> The strips, which are about as intensely flavored as Altoids, have
> become something of a fashion necessity. The PocketPaks sponsored four
> parties before the Emmy Awards, and Pfizer distributed them at the
> Golden Globes, to modeling agencies, to the Mets and to National
> Basketball Association players, following the marketing principle that
> if cool people are seen using this product, everybody else will catch
> on. Pfizer plans more parties timed to the Oscars.
>
> To older consumers, it can remain Listerine, just in a different version
> of the dependable medicinal liquid that lived in grandmother's medicine
> chest, while to new consumers, it is a toy, packaged in a new way
> subconsciously evocative of the illicit - LSD stamp sheets, for
> instance - or the sacred, like communion wafers, Mr. Shore of Harvard
> said.
>
> "You can't ignore the Freudian aspect of it, and the novel oral
> sensation," he added.
>
> But PocketPaks do not play everywhere, Dr. D'Souza noted. "The French
> think we're foolish," he said.
>
> Peter J. Brown, a medical anthropologist at Emory University, said
> Americans have long been ridiculed for their obsession with fresh breath.
>
> "Americans believe that the natural tendency of the body is to decay,
> and we have to ward that off constantly, to the point of obsession," he
> said. "But people do tend to think of fresh breath as an indicator of
> good health. We perceive having bad breath as unattractive, as the
> opposite of beauty."
>
> Whether or not PocketPaks make consumers feel beautiful, the sales
> volume is beating Altoids: 54.5 million units in 2001 in supermarkets,
> chain stores and mass merchandisers, excluding Wal-Mart, according to
> Information Resources , which tracks consumer buying. Altoids, by
> contrast, sold 49.4 million units. PocketPaks have yet to beat the still
> dominant Tic Tac, which sold 95 million units last year. But there is
> room for growth: unit sales for Tic Tac were down by 7.2 percent, and
> sales for Altoids were down by 4 percent.
>
> The notion for the PocketPaks originated in Japan, where pullulan is
> used in candy and also as an edible paper to wrap candies and mints.
>
> The first time Dr. D'Souza tried it, he knew it needed refinement for
> the American palate.
>
> "Ick," he said. "I spat it out. It tasted like paper."
>
> But he noticed that it dissolved quickly on the tongue.
>
> "We had to figure out how to make it appealing to American consumers,"
> he said. "It had to dissolve fast and be pleasurable, convenient and
> innovative." Dr. D'Souza and Dr. Pan played around with the basic
> carbohydrate film, changing flavors and adding surfactants to make it
> break up faster on the tongue. For five years, sensory experts, market
> researchers, dentists, microbiologists, physical chemists, physical
> chemical engineers and manufacturing experts worked out the kinks.
>
> Wes Pringle, the group marketing director of oral care at Pfizer,
> supervised the design of the package, which he called particularly
> important. It had to be discreet and portable, he explained, and
> extremely small, which distinguished it from other products on the
> market. "In the end, when we found that the product could fit into the
> small, front `fifth pocket' of a pair of jeans, we knew we were
> successful," he said.
>
> Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
>
>
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