Trident

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Trident is a brand of sugar-free chewing gum. It was initially presented by American Chicle quickly before it was purchased by Warner-Lambert in 1962, yet didn't arrive at the UK until 2007 when it was presented by its then-owner Cadbury Schweppes in the United Kingdom.  In many other European countries, Trident is marked as Stimorol gum; it is equivalent to Trident. In 2010, Kraft Foods acquired Cadbury, and today, Trident is possessed by Mondelez International, the successor to Kraft Foods after it turned off its non-snack foods business as Kraft Foods Group.[1]

Trident chewing gum ad

The advertisement, made by JWT, shows the Jamaican man in front of an audience in a parody club moaning about the blandness of chewing gum. He is given a pack of Trident, and is so dazzled by the taste that he goes on a  one-man crusade to promote "Mastication for the Nation".

Controversy

Trident Ad

The watchdog ruled that Cadbury's Trident TV and film commerical breached the broadcast TV advertising standards governing offense and ethnic stereotyping. The Advertising Standards Authority tracked down that the four Trident advertisements didn't actuate racial prejudice, yet could be viewed as deprecating to black or Caribbean people.

The first ad, which invokes the spirit of "revolutionary poets", featured a West Indian dub poet on stage talking about the blandness of chewing gum. An audience member hands him an exciting new type of gum, which prompts him to launch into a journey that takes him onto a boat sailing past the Houses of Parliament, shouting "mastication for the nation" through a megaphone. Some viewers also challenged that the ad was offensive and insensitive because Trident was the name of the Metropolitan Police's "black-on-black" gun crime initiative.

The ad has become one of the most complained about of the year, racking up 519 complaints. The ASA said that greater sensitivity was required of advertisers using humour based on accents, because of the "potential to cause serious offence" and in particular if it could be seen to be patronising or demeaning to groups of people who suffer racial prejudice.[2]

The ASA noted that from the complaints many viewers had been offended by what they saw as the "negative stereotype of black or Caribbean people and their culture". The ASA ruled that the ads should not be shown again. However, it did not uphold complaints about the Trident brand name and the Met Police initiative.[3]

Clarification

Company representative argued that the campaign had in fact been inspired by revolutionary poets and the lead character had been chosen because he had a "charismatic quality that appealed to the target audience of 16- to 34-year-olds".

Further, they also provided research covering the first three weeks of the campaign to show that there was a decline in the number of people finding the ads offensive and an increase in those who found it fun.

But Trident then released the new campaign which was two white British males chain their bodies to the gates of a factory to "bring gum to the masses" and kick-start a "gum revolution". The ad retains the strapline "mastication for the nation".[4]

References

  1. Trident (Gum). Retrieved on December 28, 2020.
  2. Esposito, Maria (2007). ASA pulls plug on Trident ads after racist complaints. Retrieved on December 28, 2020.
  3. Sweney, Mark (2007). Trident gum ad spat out. Retrieved on December 28, 2020.
  4. Sweney, Mark (2020). Trident replaces 'racist' ads. Retrieved on December 28, 2020.