Last Fall, Dentyne released a new ad campaign with hopes of bringing people together. With this launch, the chewing-gum company positioned itself in opposition to all things Facebook, MySpace, text-message, MSN, and email. In other words, it's taking on the new institution of social-networking -- the internet -- with the intention of bringing human communication back on par with times prior to 1989. The following are examples of the recent campaign:




Since I no longer think all advertisements are inherently evil, I can watch with delight. I enjoy the minimalism and how they depict people as generally good folk. I also find their warm rendition of commonly cold phrases, such as "send & receive," quite clever. They even made a 3-minute website that insists you disconnect after three minutes to go outside and play with your friends. According to the site, there's "enough time to browse every link, but not a second more."

As expected, not everyone thinks as highly of this strategy as I do -- here is the standard argument against my optimism. I agree that we currently have too many companies deciding how best we should live our lives, but if a piece of chewing gum can help us reconsider how we relate to one another, I think we can deal with our loses in light of what we have gained. I can imagine -- and perhaps naively -- that the marketing team would have gladly spread their message of making more face time without the product placement if they could, but they can't.