Kraft Foods is looking to boost gum sales in the US with a new line under its Stride brand.
The company will launch a Stride sub-brand called iD this summer that it hopes will attract teenage consumers.
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The gum comes in three flavours – peppermint, berry melon and spearmint – and Kraft is using art to appeal to chewers.
Each pack will contain 14 sticks of gum that will be “imprinted with a unique, colourful design”, Kraft said. The packaging will also display “original works of art”, which it claimed would communicate “the idea of individuality and expression”.
The iD gum will be packaged in a “sleek, innovative, first-of-a-kind” folding pack with a “new and unexpected magnetic closure”.
The launch comes amid pressure on gum sales in the US and overseas. Kraft chairman and CEO Irene Rosenfeld said last week the company’s retail gum sales “were up slightly” in the first quarter of the year thanks to cut-price lines and strong sales of Dentyne.
She called the performance “encouraging” in a context of “soft” overall market.
Speaking after Kraft reported its first-quarter financial results, Rosenfeld said: “Our sole disappointment remains gum and candy, which was up only 1%. Frankly, it’s taken us longer to change gum’s trajectory than we had anticipated, largely due to the sluggishness of the macro-environment. In particular, Europe, especially southern Europe, was a significant factor tempering our global gum and candy growth. Unfortunately, this will likely continue until the European economic environment recovers in key gum markets.”
