I was considering doing a humorous post on the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company's new China-only gum flavors: aloe and wolfberry. But one sentence jumped out of me, and I changed my focus of this entry.
From Crain's Chicago Business:
That's the strategy behind Lang Yi, a gum line introduced only in China last year that touts the medicinal advantages of aloe vera to improve skin and wolfberry to boost energy. The goal: get people who are more likely to smoke than chew gum hooked on a Western habit.
The effort is one way CEO William D. Perez is trying to keep Wrigley the top candy company in a country of 1.3 billion people.
Despite an embarrassing cultural gaffe last year, sales for Chicago-based Wrigley are surging in China. With U.S. sales flat, Mr. Perez considers China one of the most important markets for Wrigley, and it's imperative to keep double-digit growth there if he's going to make his profit forecasts of at least 9% gains a year.
Aha!!! But what was that gaffe? Inquiring minds want to know!
It wasn't easy, but after some search engine hits-and-misses, I found it:
Wrigley's chewing gum sales have plunged in a southern Chinese city amid a row over the Chinese national anthem being used as backing music to a chewing gum ad in Russia, state media said on Wednesday.
Complaints from the Chinese embassy in Moscow forced an advertising agency to scrap the commercial playing on Russian television.
Here's what I have to say to Crain's: Why mention the gaffe if you're not going to say what it was? You are not only performing a disservice to your readers, you are inviting them to leave your site--and you don't want that--to find out what the slip-up was.
Technorati tags:
China 
中國 
中国 
wrigleys 
chewing gum 
business 
marketing 
journalism 
MSM
No comments:
Post a Comment