3. What is the globalisation potential for Orabrush’s product and communication strategy under DenTek? (On www.youtube.com/orabrush you can watch all the videos referred to in this case.)

Introduction There are billions of bacteria on our tongue. The problem they create in the form of bad breath (halitosis)

is not new. History proves that our ancestors knew the embarrassment of halitosis. As far back as the Eber Papyrus in 1,500 bc, Egyptians were complaining about bad breath. Hebrew, Muslim and Hindu holy books all bear references to bad breath, and early Buddhist literature notes that, ‘The mouth becomes evil smelling

(when the) nerves of the tongue are not cleaned.’

The earliest archaeological evidence of tongue scraping appears to be a set of Roman toilet articles, containing a tongue scraper, which dates to ad 100. Tongue scraping remained common, at least among nobilities and elites, in many cultures around the world until the early 1900s, when tooth brushing and mouthwashes made tongue scraping an outdated art.

These microbes that live in the mouth – on the tongue

– are the main reasons for halitosis (bad breath)

in about 90 per cent of all cases. The Journal of the American Dental Association published a study (Boever and Loesche, 1995) that found that people with large colonies of anaerobic microorganisms on their tongues tended to have stronger- (worse) smelling breath than those that did not have such large colonies of bacteria.

The cause of this might also just be genetics. However, scientists and dentists agree that tongue brushing helps cure the halitosis problem. Adding a tongue scraper or brush to the twice-daily oral hygiene routine may help to eliminate bad breath even more than tooth brushing, flossing and mouth washing.