Gum comes unstuck in China, Russia row bursts bubble

BEIJING, Jan 17 (Reuters) 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 today.

Complaints from the Chinese embassy in Moscow forced an advertising agency to scrap the commercial playing on Russian television.

China's People's Daily newspaper said the commercial for gum produced by Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. using the ''March of the Volunteers'' had ''harmed the dignity of China''.

Sales of Wrigley gum had slipped in shops across Guangzhou since since the ad became a sticking point last week, the People's Daily said, citing salesmen at supermarkets in the city, the capital of Guangdong province.

''University students are very patriotic, thus affecting sales of the gum,'' the owner of a shop near a university was quoted as saying.

Nearly 90 per cent of those polled in an Internet survey said they would not forget Wrigley's gaffe, the newspaper said. Over 17,000 people said they would not buy Wrigley's gum again.

Igor Kirkchi, general director of BBDO, an advertising subsidiary of Omnigroup in Moscow, which designed the advert, said it was immediately withdrawn after complaints from the Chinese.

''It was a monstrous misunderstanding,'' he said.

''We bought the music and the rights to use it in an ad from an English company owning banks of music tracks intended for commercial purposes. It was impossible to determine that it was the Chinese national anthem by the name of the track.'' Wrigley and BBDO had both apologised, the newspaper said.

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