• Pressure Mounts For Controlling Food Marketing To Kids
    Dannon, which declined to join the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative when it was launched in 2006, has become the 15th company to sign the agreement pledging that all of its advertising directed primarily to children will be for products that meet nutritional guidelines that the Council of Better Business Bureaus has reviewed and approved. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, however, is again questioning the ability of the food industry to self-police. CSPI finds that 79% of the foods marketed to children are products like sugary cereal, candy, sugary drinks with little or no fruit juice, …
  • Book About Bacardi's Cuban Roots Basks In Glowing Reviews
    I've seen several positive reviews of Tom Gjelten's Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause (Viking, $27.95) over the past few weeks. The most interesting, from a marketing perspective, is Harry Hurt III's in last Sunday's New York Times business section . But since Gjelten is a correspondent for NPR News, I figured his own would take care of him and finally got around to searching the NPR Web site. Indeed, a "Morning Edition" interview by Renee Montagne on Sept. 8 is amplified by a short except from the book, a gallery of old …
  • Campbell Attacks Progresso Soups Over MSG
    It's been a while since we've seen a dispatch from the front lines of the soup wars, but things are apparently heating up. An ad in the Sept. 24 issue of The New York Times shows a can of General Mills' Progresso Traditional Chicken Noodle with the caption, "Made With MSG." The facing page shows new Campbell's Select Harvest Chicken with Egg Noodle with the headline: "Made With TLC." General Mills' Progresso Light soups were a big hit in 2007, in part because of a Weight Watchers endorsement that gave the line a zero-point rating. Instead of focusing on …
  • Cerberus To Daimler: Let's Go Our Separate Ways
    Cerberus Capital Management, Chrysler's majority owner, wants to buy out Daimler AG's remaining stake to clear the way for it to seek closer alliances with other car companies. Daimler bought Chrysler in 1998 in a $36 billion "merger of equals" that sparked a flurry of automotive tie-ups, many of which proved unsuccessful. Cerberus acquired 80.1% of Chrysler a year ago. Daimler's remaining stake has emerged as a stumbling block for automakers interested in forming a global alliance with Chrysler. It is unclear whether Chrysler has any potential partners prepared to engage in talks. While …
  • Second Quarter Ad Spend Drops 3.7%; Biggest Fall Since 2001
  • Consumer Groups Fret Over Chemicals In Teen Cosmetics
  • Dentyne Campaign Urges Face-To-Face Contact
    Wonder if a campaign that suggests people should chew gum and not be online at the same time can survive the rolling eyes of college kids? So does a sociologist, who also suggests it's a "false dichotomy." But Dentyne's marketing director counters that one satisfied consumer contacted the company to proclaim: "Dentyne, you may be at the forefront on an emerging social phenomenon!" The "Make face time" campaign features headlines like "the original instant message" with pictures of people in various acts of nuzzling, as if it were a lost art. But when did real-time smooching go out of …
  • Walmart Sets Oct. 4 Opening Date For Phoenix Marketsides
  • MySpace Music Challenges Apple
  • Wieden & Kennedy 'Opts Out' Of Starbucks Review
    Adweek sent out a midday news alert Wednesday about Wieden + Kennedy ending its four-year relationship with Starbucks. In this morning's story, Terry Davenport, Starbuck's CMO and svp of marketing, confirms that W&K has "has decided to opt out of the process" of an evaluation of its agency work among its current shops. It seems like only yesterday that the big news was that Starbucks was advertising in mainstream media at all after building its business online and through promotions, word of mouth and other below-the-line tactics, but it reportedly spent $55 million in media last year, and …
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