Chewing Gum Claims Generate Dispute Before BBB Advertising Arm

According to the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus (BBB), Wrigley should modify or discontinue some of the claims it makes for its Eclipse® brand chewing gum. Following a challenge by Cadbury Adams USA, which makes competing products, the BBB’s advertising division examined Wrigley claims that its gum “kills germs and cures bad breath.” The division determined that such claims “convey the message that Eclipse with MBE [magnolia bark extract] is different from other gums based on its germ killing capabilities which is attributable to the addition of MBE.”

Because scientific studies did not provide the support necessary to substantiate the claims due to purported methodological flaws, the division “recommended that the print advertising and packaging claims be discontinued or modified to indicate that there is emerging evidence as to MBE’s germ killing capability without expressly or by implication communicating that there is credible scientific evidence that the gum has been proven to kill the germs that cause bad breath or provides fresh breath based on any germ-killing ability.”

Wrigley has apparently taken issue with the division’s evaluation of its testing and with the division’s findings and has indicated that it will take an appeal to the National Advertising Review Board, “which serves as the appellate body of the advertising industry’s system of self-regulation.” See NAD News, April 8, 2009.